The PDP alleged that INEC recorded identical results for presidential election in Gombe and Bauchi States.
INEC Boss, Mahmood Yakubu
The ongoing general elections have continued to throw up controversial scenarios with the latest being insinuations that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was engaging in copying and pasting of results
Many Nigerians who trooped out to cast their votes in the presidential and national assembly elections of Saturday, February 25, 2023, are still waiting for official announcement of results in many states, 72 hours after the exercise.
It’s important to state that presidential election results are being collated at polling unit, ward, Local Government, and states level before the final tally is transferred to Abuja for adoption by INEC.
In the midst of this, a claim broke out on social media early on Tuesday alleging that the commission recorded same results for Gombe and Bauchi States in the presidential election.
While this in itself doesn’t constitute any electoral foul play, assuming that’s the case, the rarity and practical impossibility of three different political parties recording the same number of votes in two different states made it all suspicious.
During a press conference held by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Tuesday, February 28, 2023, National Chairman, Iyorchia Ayu, authoritatively quoted the figures to buttress his point that INEC has compromised the election.
However, according to investigations by Pulse, we discovered that the information that is making the rounds is absolutely false.
So, what actually happened?
Our findings revealed that the confusion emanated from an online platform, TheCableIndex, who mistakenly published infographics of results from Bauchi and Gombe States using figures from Gombe.
Screenshot of the erroneous infographics published by TheCableIndex.
The platform has also owned up to the error and issued an apology to Nigerians for the misleading information.
In a tweet posted on its page on Tuesday afternoon, TheCableIndex expressed regret over the development and issued an updated version of the infographics.
TheCableIndex’s apology.
Below is how Nigerians voted in Gombe and Bauchi States in the Saturday presidential election;
Gombe State:
APC – 146,977
PDP – 319,123
Bauchi State
APC – 316,694
PDP – 426,607
Labour Party – 27,373
