FCT Council Polls: INEC Denies Result Manipulation at Polling Unit, Cites Clerical Error

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has dismissed allegations that results were manipulated at the Kuroko Health Centre polling unit in Yangoji ward, Kwali area council, during the just concluded Federal Capital Territory (FCT) area council elections.

Following the FCT area council polls on Saturday, there had been claims that the All Progressives Congress (APC) recorded 1,219 votes despite the polling unit having only 345 registered voters and 213 accredited voters.

However, in a statement on Tuesday, Aminu Idris, the FCT resident electoral commissioner (REC), described the claim as “untrue and misleading”.

Idris said the discrepancy arose from a clerical error made by the presiding officer while recording the party’s score.

He added that the presiding officer initially recorded 122 votes for the party but later discovered an overcount after tallying the ballots.

“On tallying everything, she noticed that there was an overshoot by one. So, they had to recount the ballots in the open; that was when she realised that APC should be 121, not 122,” the statement reads.

“So, she cancelled the ‘2’ at the end and slotted in a ‘1’ in front of the cancelled ‘2’ to make it 121. She also corrected the figures in words.

“The official result recorded and uploaded from the said polling unit shows that the political party in question scored 121 votes, not 1,219 as alleged on social media.”

The REC added that party agents present at the polling unit confirmed and signed the corrected result.

He noted that the commission’s technological safeguards, including the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS) and the INEC result viewing portal (IReV), make the alleged manipulation impossible.

“The BVAS system performs internal validation checks to ensure the total votes entered do not exceed the number of accredited voters. Overvoting is automatically flagged and cannot be finalised,” Idris added.

“The number of accredited voters was 213. The score entered into the BVAS for the party concerned was 121. The total votes recorded were consistent with accreditation figures.”

The INEC official added that if 1,219 votes had actually been entered, “the BVAS device would have rejected the entry instantly” while the discrepancy would have been flagged during collation.

“The FCT election was conducted in substantial compliance with the Electoral Act and the INEC Guidelines,” he said.