Published 6th Mar, 2023

By Sodeeq Atanda

The new electoral act has made it compulsory for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to upload every polling unit result to a publicly accessible website, thereby democratising access to raw electoral data.

This access explains why a lot of results are making the rounds on social media platforms, and some users might be making misleading claims on the status of poll results.

Over the past week, social media users circulated a presidential election result sheet from Amuzu-Amuzu polling unit, Ahiaukwu Ward 1, Umuahia South Local Government Area of Abia State, across different platforms.

The result form showed that one Okeke Cynthia appended her signature on the sections meant for agents representing the different political parties. Not only did the lady sign for the political parties, according to social media users, but she also doubled as the presiding officer at the unit.

CLAIM: Okeke Cynthia, acting as a presiding officer, signed signature sections for the Action Democratic Congress, the All Progressives Congress, the Labour Party, the Peoples Democratic Party and the Zenith Labour Party.

The INEC result sheet — The result sheet

According to the official INEC election data form, the ADC got 01 vote, the APC got 02 votes, APGA got 02 votes, the LP received 218 votes, the PDP got 12 votes and the ZLP scored 01 vote.

VERIFICATION: On INEC Result Viewing (IReV) online database on Monday, FIJ found the same result sheet. It was on the portal carrying the character description and electoral figure ascribed to the said polling unit.

CONCLUSION: Since documents uploaded to the portal are expected to be correct, FIJ concludes that it’s safe to say that Okeke Cynthia actually assumed the role of party agents in addition to the non-partisan role assigned to her by INEC.

VERDICT: It is true that the presiding officer signed result sheet for all the aforementioned political parties.

Share on Social Media