Afrigather 
Controversy has trailed an impartial collation of the February 25 presidential election outcomes spearheaded by supporters of the Labour Get together presidential candidate, Peter Obi colloquially often called Obidients.
Life-style Nigeria reviews that the Labour Get together and his counterpart Peoples Democratic Get together’s counterpart candidates and supporters have faulted the victory of the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate and now President-elect, Bola Tinubu, claiming that the election was rigged in favour of the previous Lagos State governor.
Impartial Nationwide Electoral Fee, INEC declared Tinubu because the President-elect after he polled 8,794,726 votes to defeat his closest rivals, Atiku and Obi, who scored 6,984,520 and 6,101,533 votes, respectively.
However each Atiku and Obi have refused to concede defeat within the February 25 presidential election, vowing to recuperate their electoral mandate in court docket.
The 2 candidates additionally rebuffed the gesture of conciliation made by Tinubu, who in his acceptance speech after he was declared the winner of the ballot, requested them to help him within the job of constructing the nation.
Nevertheless, each presidential candidates claimed that they had knowledge to again their claims in court docket.
To show their candidate’s case, supporters of Obi, recognized higher as ‘Obidients’ on social media, had mobilised themselves to independently collate outcomes and present Nigerians that the previous Anambra State governor received the presidential ballot.
The supporters, spearheaded by one Mark Essien, with the username @markessien on the favored microblogging website, Twitter, had claimed that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System and Election End result Viewing Portal deployed by INEC weren’t utilised and true election outcomes from completely different polling models throughout the nation weren’t what was uploaded on the portal.
Collating outcomes on an impartial iReV, with the assistance of different Obidients, the primary set of outcomes shared by Essien confirmed that Obi was within the clear lead, a improvement that additional justified the declare that their candidate was allegedly rigged out.
“The best way issues are going, by tomorrow, we’d have counted 160,000 polling unit outcomes and executed our personal collation. All collation officers that thought they may announce something they wished didn’t perceive the ability of a mass motion,” Essien had tweeted on Thursday.
Bother nevertheless began hours later after the collation confirmed that Tinubu polled extra votes than Obi and Atiku mixed and was within the lead in opposition to expectation. With the event, some Obidents turned on Essien and accused him of allegedly working for the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, and never for Obi’s trigger.
Main the assault on Essien, a Twitter person with the deal with @AfamDeluxo wrote, “Mark Essien is deeply into Nasiru El-rufai’s pocket. Belief no matter you suppose he’s doing for the obidient motion at your personal peril. You may go forward and belief him, that’s positive, I don’t anybody that’s pals, or crony with the excessive and mighty within the APC. Particularly somebody like Nasiru El-rufai. By no means!”
Nevertheless, the impartial IReV portal’s outcomes had been later blocked from public view, a improvement that sparks reactions from Twitter customers.
Listed below are among the reactions:
@celestocalculus, stated, “Take Mr. Essien’s ballot & its eventual consequence with a pinch of salt. Right here’s why: if he’s sourcing the kinds from IReV on-line information, then it’s already sus to start with. Why? These information weren’t uploaded from the PU, so that they had ample time to beat it as much as match their numbers.
He added, “I do know he’s blocked the outcomes from the general public however as at proper now, 11:18 pm that is what it’s. The sport is to swing public belief to the web site. Construct anticipation by hiding the consequence, then present the ultimate final result, [maybe] as offered by [the now mostly clear] IReV uploads.
“Lastly, it’s actually simply smokes and mirrors women and gents. The sport is the sport! Enable the Labour Get together authorized crew to do their work and disrespect all these distractions, that all of us maintain in search of to spice up our validation.”
@AsiwajuOladimej wrote, “Essien was a superb man when he began the Collation and LP was main. By the point the consequence wasn’t going of their favour, they stated he’s working for APC and El Rufai. Soludo will at all times be proper. Headless Mob 🤣🤣🤣”
MrOdanz wrote, “So these individuals had been dropping on the collation centre they arrange for themselves after tallying 90% of the outcomes? I heard they’ve shut it down based mostly on “authorized recommendation” as a result of the outcomes isn’t ensuing to what they need.
“Few days in the past they had been cheering their very own INEC chairman (Mark Essien) who wished to show to them that their mandate was stolen. Now that the consequence isn’t going in accordance with plan, they’ve turned on their INEC Chairman, accusing him of being a saboteur despatched by El-Rufai.
“This was the final consequence from their very own collation heart. They’ve suspended collation for now. Solely optimistic factor from this their impartial election is that it’s clear PDP stole second place from them.”
