Peter Obi received more votes in Rivers state, but Tinubu was declared winner – BBC investigation reveals

A BBC investigation has uncovered irruftable evidence that some presidential election results in Nigeria had been falsified.

This comes as the declared m winner, Bola Tinubu, is scheduled to be sworn in on May 29, while the opposition is challenging this in an ongoing Tribunal case.

The BBC discovered major irregularities in Rivers state, a key battleground, but not enough on its own to influence the final national outcome of the February election. However, this is a clear pointer that taken across all the 36 States of Nigeria, the final results would be significantly different from what was declared, including possibly the winner.

There are also doubts about the identity of an election officer who read out some of the mysterious results in Rivers State, with INEC officials unable to confirm who he is.

The BBC tallied the voting tally sheets from over 6,000 polling locations in Rivers state, the site of many opposition concerns.
While the official result in this state gave Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) a commanding majority, the BBC tally revealed that Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) had earned the majority of votes by a significant margin.

“Peter Obi received more votes in Rivers state, but Bola Tinubu was declared the winner,” the BBC report concluded.

When compared to their polling station tally, Mr Tinubu’s vote in the official declaration increased by little over 106,000, nearly tripling his total in the state, according to the BBC. Mr Obi’s vote has dropped by nearly 50,000 votes.

“In the official declaration, Mr Tinubu’s vote increased by just over 106,000 when compared to our polling station tally, nearly doubling his total in the state.Mr Obi’s vote, on the other hand, had dropped by almost 50,000” furthered the BBC.

The BBC investigation also revealed that Tinubu’s vote climbed sixfold in Oyigbo, but Obi’s vote decreased by half.

“The first was the Oyigbo local government area, where we found: The vote for Bola Tinubu was six times larger in the officially announced results compared with the BBC’s polling station count. Peter Obi’s votes had been cut in half,” confirmed the BBC.

In Obio/Akpor, a nearby local government area and home of the Rivers State Governor, there was also a significant swing towards Tinubu and away from Obi.

“The second local government area where we found major discrepancies was in nearby Obio/Akpor:The official result for Mr Tinubu was 80,239 votes,but we counted just 17,293 votes from polling station tallies The count for Mr Obi was announced officially as just 3,829 votes, but the BBC counted 74,033 votes for him on the tally sheets”

Also of interest was the case of Dr Dickson Ariaga, an Oyigbo election official, who stated his name and confirmed that he worked for the Federal College of Education in Omoku. The BBC uncovered that not only was this a lie, the man’s credentials could not be verified by INEC and they had no contact details for him.

According to the BBC investigations, When the official who has now been confirmed to have been a fraud, got to Mr Tinubu’s APC, he read out “16,630” instead of the 2,731 written on our snapshot of the sheet.
The statistic for Mr Obi’s party (LP) then altered – instead of the 22,289 shown on the page, he announced “10,784”, more than reducing his vote.

The BBC confirmed that they asked the electoral commission whether they could speak with Dr Ariaga, but they refused to give his contact information and also failed to reach out to him on behalf of the BBC.