#Delta. Shocking! Delta governor scored more votes than number of voters, INEC confirms

The Delta State governorship
election petition tribunal,
sitting in Asaba, has admitted
four key documents, including
card readers’ accreditation
report, tendered by officials of
the Independent National
Electoral Commission.
The accreditation report
submitted by INEC showed that
the number of accredited voters
for the April 11 governorship
election in Delta state was
lower than the results
announced by electoral officials
after the polls.
Two INEC officials – Assistant
Director, ICT Department from
Abuja headquarters and Chief
Planning Officer, Delta State
office – were directed to give
testimony on the conduct of the
April 11 election, following the
request by the All Progressives
Congress and its candidate,
Emerhor Otega.
The Delta election, won by
Ifeanyi Okowa of the Peoples
Democratic Party, is being
challenged by the APC and Mr.
Otega.
Apart from the accreditation
report, other documents
tendered by the INEC officials
at the commencement of
hearing Wednesday, included,
manual for election officials
2015; INEC’s April 2, 2015 press
statement making accreditation
through use of card readers
only mandatory for the
governorship elections; and
guidelines and regulations for
the conduct of 2015 general
elections.
In their testimony, the INEC
officials said that “all
documents tendered were duly
certified by INEC, that the card
reader has three (3) functions
to with; identification of
voters, verification of PVC
holder and voter’s
authentication on Election
Day.”
Further, the tribunal was told
that “the card readers recorded
no sustained failure during the
governorship election in delta
state and accredited numbers of voters as at
April 29th was 709,000 and at the
expiration of the shutting down of data
upload, the final tally was 715,393.”
But on April 13, Delta State INEC had put
the figure of accredited voters at 1,017,796,
exceeding actual accreditation number
revealed by the admitted report obtained
from INEC central server.
In Nigeria’s technology driven 2015
elections, INEC central server generated
data real time from card readers across
polling units. This was to detect
malpractices, especially inflation of
numbers.
Announcing Mr. Okowa as the winner of
the election on April 13, the Returning
Officer, Bio Nyananyo, said the PDP
candidate polled 724,680 votes, which
translated to 14,980 votes higher than
actual number of accredited voters.
Admissibility of the documents and
ordering of INEC staff to give testimony on
the conduct of the election had been
strongly objected by Mr. Okowa, but was
dismissed by the tribunal.