Trouble started when the National Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu called on the Kwara State Returning Officer to make his presentation. It was at this point Melaye raised concern that there were a lot of discrepancies in the results from Ekiti State presented on Sunday.
The National Party Agent of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dino Melaye and some other party agents have protested and demanded that the State Collation Officers should confirm that the results being presented at the National Collation Centre in Abuja were the same as the results that were uploaded on the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IREV).
Trouble started when the National Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu called on the Kwara State Returning Officer to make his presentation. It was at this point Melaye raised concern that there were a lot of discrepancies in the results from Ekiti State presented on Sunday.
He said it was discovered that the results presented on Sunday were at variance with the results declared at the polling units.
He, therefore, called on the INEC chairman to direct the Returning Officers to display and project the tabulation of the results they were presenting on the screen simultaneously to ensure transparency.
The situation led to an altercation and confusion in the hall as Melaye insisted that he would not sit at the collation centre and endorse the “fraud” that had allegedly been perfected at the ward and state levels.
Melaye also demanded the cancellation of Ekiti State presidential election results over alleged vote-buying. According to Melaye, the total number of votes cast exceeds the number of accredited votes.
Bola Ahmed Tinubu, presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress was earlier declared the winner of the presidential election in Ekiti State.
The INEC State Collation Officer for the Saturday’s presidential poll in Ekiti State, Prof. Akeem Lasisi, who announced the results, said the APC candidate polled a total of 201,494 votes across the state to defeat candidates of other parties.
His closest rival, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, polled 89,554 votes while Labour Party’s candidate, Peter Obi garnered 11,397 votes.
The New Nigerian Peoples Party’s candidate Rabiu Kwankwaso polled 264 votes.
However, Melaye claimed that the result should be declared invalid for the alleged over-voting in the state.
He said, “Mr Chairman, I have a fundamental observation based on how proceedings went yesterday. Yesterday, we received results from Ekiti state and I worked on the result as presented yesterday and discovered that we have 987,647 registered voters in Ekiti, and 310,558 are accredited.
“And since we have 310,558 accredited, the result as presented yesterday, APC had 201,494, if you subtract that from 310,558, what you have left is 100,064, out of 100,064, PDP scored 89,554. If you subtract that from the balance of 100,064, what is left is 10,510, and now it was also recorded that Labour had 11,397 when the total number left is 10,510, leaving an over figure of 887, apart from this 887 surplus.”
“We have not calculated even the votes of other political parties because you will recall that they told us that ADC scored 1,037. So, you will see from that postulation and presentation yesterday that the figure did not add up. There was over-voting. The number of votes outweighs the number of the accredited votes and we know what exactly the law says concerning that. I move that should be considered because it cannot stand,” he added.
Yakubu later adjourned the results collation for one hour as party agents said they were coming up with their decision and standing on the observation they had raised.