Opposition to Contest Results in 11 States

Olawale Olaleye

24 April 2011

Presidential running mate of the Congress for Progressive Change in the just concluded presidential election, Pastor Tunde Bakare, Saturday in Lagos said the party has resolved to contest the election results in 11 states where it can prove allegations of irregularities that swung the votes in favour of President Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party.

Bakare who addressed a press conference in Ikeja, said there are three stages in an election and that the first and second stages which are the voting and counting stages were visibly free, but that the last critical stage, which is the collation was coloured and therefore fraudulent.

He identified the 11 states that produced the controversial results as those solely making up the south-east and south-south geo-political zones of the country.

They are Abia, Imo, Ebonyi, Enugu and Anambra in the South-east while Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Cross River, Delta, Edo and Bayelsa are in the South-south.

He said the press conference was a follow up to CPC’s letter of objection dated April 16 wherein it rejected the election results on the basis that “it was unfair and unjust as it was a subversion of the popular will of the electorate.”

He said compiled complaints from agents of CPC in Abuja, Rivers, Cross River, Enugu, Bayelsa, Nasarawa, Gombe, Bauchi, Jigawa, Taraba, Kaduna, Akwa Ibom and Delta States, were a pointer to CPC’s submission that the presidential election was massively flawed.

While giving an assessment of the figures produced by the Independent National Electoral Comm-ission, Bakare explained that “the national average turnout was about 52 percent and about 46 percent respectively when the substantially above average turnout rate in the south-south and south-east zones are excluded.

According to him, “the average turnout rate in the south-south and south-east zones (without Ebonyi and Edo States) at 78 percent is 50 percent above the national average of about 52 percent.”

He queried how Dr. Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP got over 85 percent share of the valid votes cast in all the 11 states in the south-south and south-east zones with 10 of the said states at 95 percent and above, including four of the states at 99 percent and one at a near perfect 99.6 percent in his home state.

“Thus, all the 11 states in the two zones showed a red flag for being above the national average turnout rate and/or were above the 85 percent threshold,” he said, wondering if figures of 95 percent and above for one party suggested that they were fabricated, more so that 10 states are affected.

The CPC vice presidential candidate said neither Buhari nor any other candidate of the opposition party had a state with an average turnout rate above the national average and share of valid votes in excess of 85 percent.

He therefore wondered how the president recorded such high scores in not just one or three states but nine.

“The inevitable reasonable conclusion from the incontrovertible facts is that no credible elections took place in the south-south and south-east zones and that those returns were basically concocted through fraudulent thumb printing and stuffing of ballot papers and/or that the results were deliberately falsified in favour of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP,” Bakare said.

Taking Rivers State as one example, Bakare said, “The average turnout in the declared result for the state metamorphosed into well over 76 percent of registered voters,” adding that the total number of registered voters in a particular ward at 6,031 later transformed into 377,517 total valid votes.

“This could well have been an error; but yet again, the ultimate beneficiary is Dr. Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP as he was awarded about 710,000 (98percent) votes of the total valid votes of 725,884.

“Does this make for a credible election?” he queried.

Bakare who was not oblivious of the need for the CPC to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt, noted that after the party’s sensitive analysis and fabricated figures taken out of the total result, General Muhammadu Buhari, presidential candidate of the CPC had the majority of votes, a situation he said precludes Jonathan from being declared winner of the election.

However, in CPC’s final breakdown of the figures, Bakare said that the spurious votes cast in south-east and south-south for the PDP were 11,103,854 and 70,313 for the CPC.

Thus, when these are deducted from the 22,495,187 of the PDP and 12,214,853 of the CPC respectively, the figures would come down to 11,391,333 for the PDP and 12,144,540 for the CPC, the interpretation of which he said is that Buhari won the election.

He implored INEC to, as a matter of urgency, take custody of the election materials and make the ballot papers in support of the votes cast in the two zones available for a representative sample of the thumb prints to be matched with the biometrics-based voter register by forensic experts.

While suggesting that similar steps can be taken in the north-west and north-east for balancing, he said a sample of the result sheets at the ward and local government collation centres should be examined by independent third party accountants.

“If the ballot papers and/or figures are found to have been substantially manipulated, the commission should be bold enough to reverse its position on the declared result if only in the interest of peace and greater public good,” he stated.

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