By Adedapo Adesanya
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Sunday started collating results of Saturday’s general elections on a state-by-state basis.
The first results from the election announced by the electoral umpire came from Ekiti state, with the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Bola Tinubu, winning the small southwest state.
Mr Tinubu raked in 201,494 votes in Ekiti state, the returning officer of the province said at a briefing organized by INEC. The Peoples Democratic Party’s Atiku Abubakar got 89,554, while the Labour Party’s Peter Obi garnered 11,397.
Meanwhile, in APC stronghold, Lagos State, 17 out of 20 LGAs completed so far show a tight race between Mr Tinubu and LP’s Peter Obi.
The APC is reportedly ahead with 460,184 votes out of the total 994,831 votes cast across the 17 LGAs, while LP got 443,008 votes, with the PDP in a distant third with 60,324 votes.
This comes after claims that voting in some parts of the city was disrupted. It was also claimed that the biometric voting machines malfunctioned, while there were reports of violence.
Vote counting will continue into Monday as people still voted on Sunday — a day late — in areas due to technical glitches that meant machines did not accredit some people.
The new electronic system used in the polls, the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS), messed up in some places. The device was used to verify voters.
Also, there were reports of snags in polling stations where the BVAS could not transmit results into the INEC server, raising concerns that the results might be compromised.
“The commission wishes to assure Nigerians that the challenges are not due to any intrusion or sabotage of our systems,” the INEC said in a statement. “Results cannot be tampered with, and any discrepancy between them and the physical results used in collation will be thoroughly investigated and remediated.”
The count will continue today at 11 AM, INEC Chairman Mahmood Yakubu said.
Modupe Gbadeyanka