BBC raises alarm over Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election results

The results of Nigeria’s 2023 elections may have been manipulated; a BBC investigation has revealed.

The UK-based media house has disclosed that it noticed some anomalies in the results through its findings.

The investigations were mainly based in Nigeria’s Rivers State where the opposition leaders Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi’s election petition stems from.

The BBC reports that checks at results from Rivers State show that even though the President-elect Ahmed Tinubu polled a large number of votes and was declared the winner in the state, Labour Party’s Peter Obi polled a wider margin.

This was concluded after the BBC added up voting tally sheets from over 6,000 polling stations in Rivers State.

The news outlet, however, admits that its findings cannot change the overall results of Nigeria’s polls which took place in February 2023.

There was an increase of just over 106,000 in Tinubu's votes in the official declaration when compared with BBC’s polling station tally.

Peter Obi’s votes, however, fell by over 50,000 during the official declaration.

There are also concerns about an unknown election official who read out some of the unexplained results.

One Dickson Ariaga introduced himself as a member of the staff of the Federal College of Education in Omoku near Port Harcourt.

A visit to the college revealed that there was no such person with that name in the school’s records and payroll.

"From our records, both from our payroll and from our human resources, there is no such a name in our system and we don't know such a person," the deputy provost of the college told the BBC.



Moses Ekpa says the Federal College of Education in Omoku has never heard of Dickson Ariaga

Nigeria’s electoral commission has refused to comment on the findings due to the ongoing petition before the election tribunal.

Bola Ahmed Tinubu won the elections by 1.8 million votes and will be sworn into office on Monday, May 29, 2023.

Meanwhile, the United States of America has restricted some Nigerians who disrupted the 2023 elections from gaining visas to the country.

This was communicated by US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken in a tweet.

ABJ/GA