PDP campaign council DG leads protest to INEC

Director General of the Asue/Ogie Campaign Council, Matthew Iduoriyekemwen, led members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on a protest to the head office of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Benin City, on Sunday morning.

The protesters, who stormed the INEC office at about 2:27 am, said the PDP chose to protest the outcome of the poll, which they claimed was being skewed in favour of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

While journalists and party agents were  inside the INEC Conference Hall for the commencement of the collation of the election results, the protesters stormed the INEC gate.

Iduoriyekemwen said the PDP was cruising to victory but information available to the party showed that there were plans to release a final result that would not reflect the wishes of the voters.

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He said, “We have information that the result is being skewed to favour Monday Okpehbolo when it is clear that our candidate is coasting to victory. We will not accept this, we will contest it”

They were dispersed by the police shortly after speaking to journalists through the barricade.

Meanwhile, there is heavy security deployment at the INEC, while journalists and observers are waiting at the venue of the results collation, no official communication from the commission as to why the exercise is yet to commence.

As of the time of filing this report, INEC had uploaded 97 per cent of election results onto the Results Viewing portal.

A preliminary analysis of election results on the IReV shows that the APC candidate is leading in Edo North Senatorial District, while the PDP candidate is leading in Edo South Senatorial District.

The total number of registered voters in this election is 2,629,025. With 1,254,424 (55.76 per cent), Edo South leads the pack of eligible voters, followed by Edo North Senatorial which has 629,397 (27.98 per cent), while Edo Central has 356,959 voters (16.27 per cent) registered voters.