The Independent National Electoral Commission has said that despite the extension of the Saturday’s elections till Sunday in some parts of the country, the complete results of the presidential poll will be declared on Monday.
INEC chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, who gave this assurance on Sunday, however, said as of Sunday evening, results of the polls had only been completely collated in two states, one of which was Ekiti.
He maintained that the commission would declare the results of the presidential election within 48 hours after the conduct of the polls as it did in 2011.
He said this while addressing journalists in company with some of the INEC commissioners on the update on the conduct of the elections so far at the International Conference Centre, Abuja, venue of the National Collation Centre of the elections.
He said, “Some people assume that when I said 48 hours, it starts from the morning the elections commenced. It is 48 hours after elections have ended, like yesterday.
“You start counting 48 hours from yesterday (Saturday), when substantial majority of the polling units ended elections.”
He expressed satisfaction with the conduct of the Saturday’s polls, which he said held in a substantial number of polling units across the country, including the troubled North-East region, where he said Internally Displaced Persons were able to vote in three states of Adamawa, Yobe and Borno.
“We are pleased that the elections went on smoothly in a substantial number of Polling Units across the country, including the North East where the commission was also able to conduct voting for Internally Displaced Persons in the three states of Adamawa, Yobe and Borno,” he said.
He also debunked speculation that the resort to manual accreditation in some polling units, where the card reader machines failed, could undermine the credibility of the election.
According to him, out of more that 150,000 card readers used for the conduct of the polls on Saturday, only 300 of them failed, representing only about 0.25 per cent of the total number of machines.
“It is also gratifying to not that the card readers worked well in the majority of polling units, even though there were areas where difficulties experienced necessitated additional guidelines to allow for manual accreditation of voters, as announced yesterday (Saturday),” he said.
He said the resort to manual accreditation occurred in some polling units in nine states which are Osun, Kebbi, Ekiti, Adamawa, Borno, Jigawa, Anambra, Akwa Ibom and Ebonyi.”
INEC dismisses PDP’s claim of victory in 23 states
The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, has dismissed claims of victory by the Peoples Democratic Party in 23 states as reported by the Director of Media and Publicity of the PDP Presidential Campaign Organisation, Femi Fani-Kayode.
Fani-Kayode had on his official Twitter page on Sunday, said,”As we speak now, we are winning in 23 states and we have 64 per cent while the APC is winning in 14 states and has 36 per cent.”
But Jega, in a series of tweets on the official Twitter page of INEC, countered the claim.
He urged Nigerians to be “wary of declaration from people who are clearly partisan.”
Jega said in the tweets, “I don’t know where the PDP spokesman got his source but we have not collated results in 23 states.”
The INEC boss stated that the collation of results would begin by 12pm on Monday.
While justifying his reports, Fani-Kayode said he got his statistics from “our polling agents at every polling unit in the country. They gave us the numbers.”
