Election results obtained from the Independent national Electoral Commission (INEC) Result Viewing (IREV) portal has shown clearly that the Labour Party (LP) candidate in the presidential election held on February 25, 2023, Mr. Peter Gregory Obi, won Rivers State with landslide.
It could be recalled that INEC had announced the following as the result of the presidential election held in Rivers State as follows:
- APC – 231,591,
- Labour Party – 175,071,
- NNPP – 1,322, and,
- PDP – 88,468.
The tabulation by INEC brought the total of all votes cast for the 18 political parties to 496,452 votes.
According to INEC, the ruling APC won the Rivers State presidential election with 231,591 over and above Labour Party which purportedly scored 175,071.
The results on IREV, however, show that contrary to the results announced by INEC, Mr. Peter Obi won Rivers State with Bola Tinubu trailing behind.
IREV indicated that contrary to INEC’s 496,452 votes, a total of 564,366 votes were recorded.
Out of that number, the former Anambra State governor and Labour Party’s candidate scored a very high 326,812 votes.
Tinubu of APC trailed far behind with 145,505 votes despite all alleged efforts by the Rivers State Governor, Mr. Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, to manipulate the results.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, came third with 87,296 votes, while the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) presidential candidate, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, came fourth with 4,535 votes.
See the attached table below indicating the seventeen Local Government Areas in the state:
In the meantime, the hearing on the petitions before the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal over the controversial February 25 election has kickstarted on Monday, May 8, 2023, with a pre-trial hearing of the petition filed by the Labour Party and its candidate, Peter Obi.
Political observers have also opined that the total number of 496,452 voters may have been downplayed as over a million people were accredited for voting on the said election day.
INEC, on the other hand, is reportedly in a big dilemma presently over the 9,403 presidential election results yet to be uploaded on IREV portal which, according to sources, are “missing”.