A mild drama ensued on Monday at the National Collation Centre when former chairman of the Senate Committee on the Federal Capital Territory, Dino Melaye, rejected the presidential election result declared for Ekiti State, alleging over-voting.
The drama started before the beginning of collation when Melaye, who is also the agent of the Peoples Democratic Party, raised an observation that the figures of results announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission for Ekiti State failed to tally.
INEC had declared the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, winner for Ekiti State with 201,494 defeating his closest rival Alhaji Abubakar Atiku of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, who scored 89, 554.
Peter Obi of Labour Party polled 11,397 votes while Rabiu Kwankwaso of New Nigeria Peoples Party polled 264 votes; 1703 votes were cancelled due to bye-pass of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation Systems and over-voting.
But making his observation, Melaye, said after calculation done by the PDP, there was a discrepancy of an increase of 887 in the total number of figures from Ekiti State.
The agents of the Action Alliance, Kenneth Udeze and Labour Party, Umar Farouk agreed with the observation made by Melaye
But INEC, chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, insisted that the commission stood by the result declared by the collation officer of Ekiti State, Prof. Akeem Olawale Lasisi, who is the Vice Chancellor, Federal University of Health Sciences, Ila Orangun, Osun State.
“I still insist that the figure presented by the state collection officer for the presidential election for Ekiti state of the total number of accredited voters is 315,058. This is what is on the spreadsheet that we screened yesterday. And this is also what is on the actual result manual recorded by the scope and signed by the PDP agent and agents of other political parties back in Ekiti state.
“But having said that, I’ve taken note of your observations, let us make progress on that one. But what we have here is exactly what I’ve said. And any other figure that is at variance with this one cannot supersede the official result presented. Let’s make progress.”
But Melaye continued and almost stopped the collation of results from Kwara state.
