After receiving the results of 14 states, INEC Chairman and Returning Officer for the Presidential Election, Mahmood Yakubu, announced Monday evening that the collation of results would continue until 10 a.m. GMT today.
On Sunday, Mr. Yakubu received the Ekiti results.
He received the results of the states of Kwara, Osun, Ondo, Ogun, Oyo, Yobe, Enugu, Lagos, Gombe, Jigawa, Adamawa, Katsina, and Nasarawa on Monday.
However, because no other state’s collation officer was present, Mr. Yakubu announced that the collation would be suspended for the day and resumed on Tuesday when the results of more states would be in.
So far, the All Progressive Congress (APC) candidate, Bola Tinubu, has won in six states: Jigawa, Oyo, Ogun, Ondo, Kwara, and Ekiti.
Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, is leading in five states: Katsina, Adamawa, Gombe, Yobe, and Osun.
Meanwhile, Peter Obi, the Labour Party (LP) candidate, has won in Nasarawa, Lagos, and Enugu.
Rabiu Kwankwaso’s New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) has not won any of the states presented to INEC Chairman as of Tuesday.
Other states’ results have been announced by the appropriate INEC officials, but have yet to be presented to Mr Yakubu in Abuja.
Earlier in the collation process, PDP and LP agents walked out of the collation center in protest of INEC’s failure to upload all polling unit results before the collation of results began.
According to both parties, the electoral law requires that all results be uploaded to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) before collation.
The INEC Chairman, however, insisted that the process could proceed even if the results were not uploaded.
As of Monday evening, less than 60% of Nigeria’s result sheets had been uploaded.
Festus Okoye, INEC’s National Commissioner for Voter Education, blamed the failure to upload the results on technical difficulties on Sunday.
The INEC Chairman, on the other hand, stated that he would speak about the results uploading today.
Later that day, at a press conference, the PDP accused INEC of releasing tainted results.
Debo Ologunagba, the PDP’s National Publicity Secretary, demanded that INEC transmit the results directly “into the INEC Server/Website as provided for in Section 68 of the Electoral Act 2022.”
Also on Monday, ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo accused the result collation process of fraud.
He claimed that the BVAS’s failure to promptly upload results from polling units to the election results portal demonstrated that the process was being manipulated.
He requested that President Muhammadu Buhari intervene in the dispute.
In an immediate response, the APC campaign council accused Mr. Obasajo of calling for a military coup in Nigeria.
The council stated that Mr. Obasanjo has no evidence of the alleged fraud and is not a neutral arbiter because he supported Mr. Obi of the Labour Party.
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