ABUJA, Nigeria – Eric Ofoedu, a mathematics professor at Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Awka, Anambra, testified on Friday, June 16, 2023, before the Presidential Election Petitions Court, PEPC, that a total of 2,565,629 accredited votes were not reflected in the final results of the February 25 presidential election, as announced by the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Yakubu Mahmood.
A witness called by counsel of the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi, Prof. Ofoedu explained his use of projection in analyzing election results from Rivers and Benue States.
Ofoedu stated that when the blurred results he downloaded were compared to Form EC8As (polling unit results) given to Labour Party agents, over 2.5 million votes were missing in the final tally.
In his evidence, the professor pointed out that scores from 39,546 polling units were inaccessible on the INEC Result Viewing Portal, IREV, and results from an additional 18,088 polling units were blurred.
Ofoedu said that this discrepancy negatively impacted over 2.5 million accredited voters and over 9 million voters who collected their PVCs.
In cross-examinations by the legal teams of the INEC, President Bola Tinubu, Kashim Shettima, and the All Progressives Congress, Ofoedu clarified his methods and stated that he accepted the request by the Labour Party to analyze the results primarily to educate his students.
INEC’s lawyer, A.B. Mahmoud SAN, argued that Ofoedu, not being an election expert, could not competently determine what constituted compliance or non-compliance to the Electoral Act 2022.
The professor disagreed, asserting that he could determine electoral compliance.
Ofoedu agreed with counsel to Tinubu and Kashim Shettima, Akin Olujimi SAN, that IREV is not a collation center but a checker, and confirmed that his report covered all states, albeit Benue and Rivers stood distinctively.
When pressed further, Ofoedu explained that his analysis was based on available data, and the assessment would have differed had he had access to all data.
