Reactions As ‘Obidients’ Close Alternative Result Collation Portal After Tinubu’s Lead

Reactions As ‘Obidients’ Close Alternative Result Collation Portal After Tinubu’s Lead

An independent collation of the February 25 presidential election results, spearheaded by supporters of Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi, has been marred by controversy.

Supporters of both Obi and his Peoples Democratic Party counterpart, Atiku Abubakar, have criticized the victory of the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate and now President-elect, Bola Tinubu, claiming that the election was rigged in his favor.

Tinubu was declared President-elect by the Independent National Electoral Commission after receiving 8,794,726 votes to defeat his closest rivals, Atiku and Obi, who received 6,984,520 and 6,101 votes, respectively.

However, both Atiku and Obi have refused to accept defeat in the presidential election on February 25, vowing to fight for their electoral mandate in court.

The two candidates also rejected Tinubu’s conciliation gesture, in which he asked them to support him in his acceptance speech after being declared the winner of the election.

However, both presidential candidates claimed in court that they had data to back up their claims. According to The PUNCH, the trio hired a team of 89 Senior Advocates of Nigeria for the legal battle.

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According to sources within the warring political parties, a group of legal luminaries drawn from various chambers are currently being provided with materials that could be used as evidence in court.

To prove their candidate’s case, Obi supporters, dubbed ‘Obidients’ on social media, had organized to independently collate results and show Nigerians that the former Anambra State governor had won the presidential election.

The supporters, led by one Mark Essien, with the Twitter handle @markessien, claimed that INEC’s Bimodal Voter Accreditation System and Election Result Viewing Portal were not used, and that true election results from different polling units across the country were not uploaded to the portal.

Collating results on an independent iReV with the help of other Obidients, Essien’s first set of results showed Obi in a clear lead, further justifying their claim that their candidate was allegedly rigged out.

“The way things are going, by tomorrow, we would have counted 160,000 polling unit results and done our own collation. All collation officers that thought they could announce anything they wanted did not understand the power of a mass movement,” Essien had tweeted on Thursday.

Trouble began hours later, when the results showed Tinubu had received more votes than Obi and Atiku combined and was in the lead, contrary to expectations. With the development, some Obidents turned on Essien, accusing him of working for Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai rather than Obi’s cause.

Leading the attack on Essien, a Twitter user with the handle @AfamDeluxo wrote, “Mark Essien is deeply into Nasiru El-rufai’s pocket. Trust whatever you think he is doing for the obidient movement at your own peril. You can go ahead and trust him, that’s fine, I don’t anyone that is friends, or crony with the high and mighty in the APC. Especially someone like Nasiru El-rufai. Never!”

However, the results of the independent IReV portal were later blocked from public view, eliciting reactions from Twitter users.

A user, @celestocalculus, said, “Take Mr. Essien’s poll & its eventual result with a pinch of salt. Here’s why: if he’s sourcing the forms from IReV online records, then it’s already sus to begin with. Why? Those records weren’t uploaded from the PU, so they had ample time to beat it up to fit their numbers.

He added, “I know he’s blocked the results from the public but as at right now, 11:18 pm this is what it is. The game is to swing public trust to the website. Build anticipation by hiding the result, then show the final outcome, [maybe] as presented by [the now mostly clear] IReV uploads.

“Finally, it’s really just smokes and mirrors ladies and gents. The game is the game! Allow the Labour Party legal team to do their work and disregard all these distractions, that we all keep looking for to boost our validation.”

@AsiwajuOladimej wrote, “Essien was a good guy when he started the Collation and LP was leading. By the time the result wasn’t going in their favour, they said he is working for APC and El Rufai. Soludo will always be right. Headless Mob 🤣🤣🤣”

@Sholexx_ wrote, “Obidient dey their own dey nurse their wound. You carry your oversabi say you wan audit Irev results and assured them that Obi won the election. Now, the audit is not “mathing” as you’ve anticipated. You must collect from both Obidient and Agbado hand today.”

@MrOdanz wrote, “So these people were losing at the collation centre they set up for themselves after tallying 90% of the results? I heard they’ve shut it down based on “legal advice” because the results isn’t resulting to what they want.

“Few days ago they were cheering their own INEC chairman (Mark Essien) who wanted to prove to them that their mandate was stolen. Now that the result isn’t going according to plan, they have turned on their INEC Chairman, accusing him of being a saboteur sent by El-Rufai.

“This was the last result from their own collation center. They have suspended collation for now. Only positive thing from this their independent election is that it is clear PDP stole second position from them.”