BREAKING: Results on INEC portal show Peter Obi, not Tinubu, won in Rivers State

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By Chinagorom Ugwu and Saviour Imukudo

The candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, won the 25 February presidential election in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State, South-south Nigeria, according to results uploaded on the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV).

Mr Obi’s haul of votes in the area implies he, and not Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), won the presidential election in Rivers, contrary to the declaration made by INEC.

The result for Obio/Akpor council area, as declared by INEC, portrayed Mr Tinubu as scoring 80, 239 votes, with Mr Obi garnering 3,829 votes.

Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) scored 368 votes while Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party got 161 votes, this newspaper had reported.

Mr Tinubu was later declared winner of the election. Atiku came second while Mr Obi came third.

But PREMIUM TIMES’ review of the results from various polling units of the 17 wards in Obio/Akpor LGA as uploaded on IReV revealed a sharp contrast with the result declared by INEC.

Given that Mr Tinubu was declared winner in Obio/Akpor, this newspaper’s review focused on the results of the votes scored by the APC and LP in the area

By our tally, the APC got 17, 158 votes while the LP amassed 73,311 votes.

Obio/Akpor Local Government Area has 1,211 polling units across its 17 wards.

PREMIUM TIMES could only review results from 1,116 polling units uploaded on the IReV as of 16 March, representing about 94.13 percent of the results from the council area.

However, results from some polling units were either blurred or improperly snapped and therefore illegible.

Results from about 95 polling units, representing about 5.87 per cent, were yet to be uploaded within the period under review.

There were no results in some polling units either because the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System malfunctioned or people did not come out to cast their votes, as observed at Ake Hostel UNIPORT Polling Unit in Choba Ward. 

This newspaper computed the available and readable results from the 1,116 polling units uploaded so far on the IReV within the period of the review.

In some polling units in Obio/Akpor, PREMIUM TIMES found that some results were altered in favour of the APC, with the original scores mutilated.

The result from Rumuorluoji Open Space II polling unit in Oro-Igwe Ward, for instance, showed that the APC originally scored 17 but the number, ‘2’ was added to the figure to read ‘217.’

For the LP, 227 was recorded, but the number ‘2’ was erased and altered to read ‘027.’

At the column meant for recording the scores in words, there were evidence of adjustments to suit the changed figures.

In Rumuokoro Ward, it was noticed that in 34 polling units, results earlier written for the LP were erased and the figures swapped with that of the APC.

PREMIUM TIMES, nevertheless, tallied the figures as published by INEC, despite the obvious evidence of adjustments and mutilations. In other words, the figures were tallied as they appeared on result sheets, even when there was evidence that such figures were tampered with.

In some cases, the results for the National Assembly elections were uploaded in some polling units instead of the presidential election results.

A result from the Civic Centre Hall Polling Unit in Rumuigbo Ward, for instance, showed that a result from the House of Representatives election was uploaded in place of that of the presidential election.

PREMIUM TIMES also tallied results from Degema Local Government Area uploaded on the IReV, and the findings confirmed Mr Tinubu won in the council area, although the score was slightly lower than the one announced by INEC.

However, this newspaper could not tally the results from some polling units in the council area because they were illegible or not yet uploaded within the period under review.

Mr Obi was leading Mr Tinubu with over 23,000 votes by the time INEC announced the presidential election results in 21 of the 23 local government areas in the state.

The LP candidate polled 169,414 votes at the time, while Mr Tinubu scored 148,979 votes.

Mr Obi’s largest votes at the time came from Port Harcourt City Local Government Area where he scored 62,451 votes, while Atiku scored 7,203 votes, followed by Mr Tinubu, who scored 5,562 votes. Kwankwaso scored 301.

Results were still being expected then from two remaining local government areas – Obio/Akpor, where the State Governor, Nyesom Wike, hails from, and Degema.

With the results from Obio/Akpor coming in, and with INEC announcing that Mr Tinubu scored 80, 239 votes against Mr Obi’s 3,829 votes, the APC candidate was now in the lead and was eventually declared the winner of the presidential election in Rivers State.

Atiku scored 368 votes in Obio/Akpor, while Mr Kwankwaso scored 161 votes.

In Degema Local Government Area, Mr Tinubu scored 2,375 votes, while Mr Obi scored 2,212 votes. Atiku scored 3,108 votes, while Mr Kwankwaso scored 44 votes.

Mr Tinubu polled 231,591 votes in Rivers State as against Mr Obi’s 175,071 votes, according to INEC.

Atiku scored 88,468, while Mr Kwankwaso clinched 1,322 votes.

The collation officer for the presidential election in Rivers had adjourned the collation of results at some point over alleged threat to his life by some supporters of a political party.

There were reports of attacks and suppression of voters in the state.

Governor Wike, who is a member of the PDP, led other PDP governors to rebel against the national leadership of the party and its presidential candidate, Atiku, following disagreement over which of the north or the south should produce President Muhammadu Buhari’s successor.

The Rivers governor had contested and lost in the PDP presidential primary.

He then supported the APC candidate, Mr Tinubu in the presidential election, saying since Mr Buhari is from the north, the next president of Nigeria, for the sake of fairness, should come from the south.

Mr Obi, like Mr Tinubu, is from the south of Nigeria.

PREMIUM TIMES

Holy Week attacks on Christian communities in Nigeria leave nearly 100 dead

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By Douglas Burton

At least 94 people reportedly have died in a series of deadly attacks on Christian communities throughout Holy Week in Benue state in north-central Nigeria, an ominous sign of escalating violence blamed on Muslim militias in the country’s Middle Belt region.

On April 2, armed men reportedly stormed a Palm Sunday service at a Pentecostal church in Akenawe-Tswarev in Logo county, Benue state, killing a young boy and kidnapping the pastor and other worshippers.

Three days later, on April 5, gunmen killed at least 50 people in the village of Umogidi, located in Utokpo county, a Catholic stronghold in western Benue, the Associated Press reported.

More recently, on the night of Good Friday, dozens were killed when Muslim gunmen raided an elementary school building in the village of Ngban that serves as a shelter for about 100 displaced Christian farmers and their families.

The April 7 attack left 43 people dead and more than 40 injured, according to Father Remigius Ihyula, who heads the Benue branch of the Justice, Development, and Peace Commission (JDPC), a Nigerian Catholic relief organization.

Hours before the attack, Benue’s outgoing governor, Samuel Ortom, speaking in Otukpo, warned residents to remain vigilant and criticized what he sees as a slow response on the part of police and army units to respond to his requests for help.

Ortom had demanded for four years that federal laws be changed to allow citizens to buy firearms for self-defense, without success.

A JDPC relief worker who asked to remain anonymous told CNA she arrived the next morning to care for survivors and spoke to police officers manning the checkpoint near the school.

“Some of the survivors told me that police had fought the attackers and possibly killed some of them, but the marauding band retrieved their dead on their way out of the school compound, and the police told me the same,” she said.

“I doubt that the survivors of the attack on the primary school could go to church on Easter Sunday, as they need medicine and trauma counseling,” Father Ihyula told CNA.

While visiting with survivors of the April 7 attack in Ngban, Ortom said at least 134 people were killed in attacks in Benue over five days. Included in that tally is an April 3 raid in Apa that left 47 dead, according to a report by ThisDaylive.com, a Nigerian news outlet. It was not immediately clear on Monday whether Christians were the targets in that attack.

Benue state has an estimated 2 million displaced persons who cannot live on their traditional farm lands for fear of being killed. Some farmers venture back to cultivate their fields during the day and retreat to displaced person camps at night.

Catholic News Agency

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Tinubu’s Falsified Age and Certificate: A Typical Nigerian Corrupt System

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Since 1999, only few men have best ridden Nigeria’s political landscape like a colossus as the current National Leader of the All Progressives Congress. As the ultimate kingmaker, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has anointed governors and frustrated the ambitions of those who would not kowtow to his political vision. As he concluded the celebrations for his alleged 69th birthday, it has been revealed that like many other Nigerian citizens who engage in this despicable act, the political juggernaut Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has falsified his age.

The 70th birthday anniversary of the national leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has prompted populist skepticism and questions over the real age of the renowned politician and former Governor of Lagos State. Several Nigerians took to their social media platforms to express their doubts over the age of the politician who celebrated 70 years in March 2022. The people raised questions of integrity in relation to claims of age or pretenses of celebrating his false age.

Sturdy analysis carried out by Africa Daily News, New York and some other reputable media companies have observed that the first wife of Tinubu died at the age of 74 years, while the first son died at 43 years, yet, Tinubu is marking his 70th birthday in 2022. More strong pieces of evidence pointed out that the renowned politician couldn’t be the age he is claiming, being 24 years older than his son and many years younger than the first wife. This is why serious projections have put his age at somewhere between 85 to 90.

This would not be the first time Asiwaju Bola Tinubu would be engaging in blatant fraudulent maneuvers to suit his insatiable hunger for power and political dominance in Nigeria. He was once slammed with an allegation that he forged a certificate for an International school. In 1999, one Dr. Waliu Balogun had written a petition against Tinubu that he did not attend the University of Chicago as indicated in his INEC form 001 filled when he contested the Lagos State governorship poll and that he also lied in the affidavit he attached to the INEC form, in which he declared that he lost his university degree certificate while he was in exile between 1994 and 1998. 

Balogun’s litany of complaints included accusations that Tinubu’s claim of attending Government College, Ibadan, was false; and that he lied in the INEC form about his age – that he was born in 1952 as against the 1954 he filled in the documents at the University of Chicago. Tinubu was also accused of not participating in the compulsory one-year NYSC exercise.

Generating a lot of furor, Tinubu was forced to present the original copy of his certificate while he dismissed the allegations as ‘baseless, wicked and unfortunate.’ Notwithstanding, that year, a firebrand lawyer and human rights activist, Gani Fawehinmi, went to court to compel the Inspector General of Police to investigate Tinubu. Fawehinmi did not live long enough to finish the lawsuit. In 2013, however, one Dr. Dominic Adegbola filed an unsuccessful application seeking to reopen the suit.

This goes a long way to show how desperate Nigerian leaders and politicians are when it comes to clinching and retaining power. And this phenomenon of falsification of age, documents and other credentials are not limited to just the politicians alone. It is also rampant amongst Nigerian citizens in every level, status or pedigree. It is so common amongst Nigerians that two Nigerians out of three are either actively engaging in age, document falsification or they have done it in the past.

There are numerous reasons  why Nigerians would chose to falsify their age and documents, the most common reasons for these are to avoid marriage stigmatization (especially among the females in Nigeria), they also do it at their workplaces to give them an added advantage over a position they are vying for or to retain a position that they are already occupying. Many Nigerian Tertiary institution students also engage in age falsification to aid them to get better advantages in the National Youth Service scheme. Time and time again, a few scapegoats are caught but this does not deter some other students from engaging in it.

Another reason which is not limited to Nigerians alone is in the sports sector. Age fraud in sports is age fabrication or the use of false documentation to gain an advantage over opponents. In football, it is common amongst players belonging to nations where records are not easily verifiable. The media often refer to the player with false documentation as an ‘age-cheat’. There are several reasons why players choose to use false documentation. European scouts are looking for young talented players from poorer countries to sign for a European club. 

The players know that there is a lesser chance of being signed if they are, for example, 23 years old as opposed to 17 years old as there would be less time for the club to develop the player. Age fabrication also allows an older player to enter in youth competitions and it attracts some other obvious benefits like salary increment and longer transfer durations. Although Nigerian sportsmen and women are not notorious for age fabrication, a few never do wells are usually caught and sampled out for punishment to serve as a deterrent to others who plan to engage in age or document fabrication.

Age or document falsification is a huge crime that should always be investigated and ironed out. It is completely unfortunate that the Nigerian Government and other security forces would rather choose to turn a blind eye to this fast-growing menace than deal with it decisively. They avoid it because many of them who hold powerful positions are all guilty of the same offense.

Tinubu is corruption and dishonesty personified and his lack of even an iota of moral compass typifies the current breed of scavengers and marauders, masquerading as politicians in the Nigerian political landscape. 

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