Quadri Yahya
Claim
David Hundeyin a Journalist has claimed the Labour Party has won the Nigeria election by a nationwide landslide.
Verdict
False. The Independent National Electoral Commission is yet to declare the final result. Moreover, there has been a variance in the results trickling in from polling units, as at the time of this report.
Full Text
Nigerians have gone to the polls to cast their votes on Saturday.
At the moment, the electoral body is still collating results from across the country, except for some states where violence reigned and elections could not be held.
While results from INEC have been trickling in since yesterday, the social media space has been flooded with unverified results claiming to be from polling units.
In the same vein Hundeyin, a social media influencer and also an ardent supporter of the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, claimed that LP is winning the polls by a wide margin.
The Labour Party has won this election by an unprecedented nationwide landslide. INEC knows it. APC knows it. The voters CERTAINLY know it.
If you spit in their faces in such a truly unprecedented way, I cannot vouch for what they will do in response!
It will not end well!
— David Hundeyin (@DavidHundeyin) February 25, 2023
At press time, the post has garnered 5k retweets, 100 quote tweets and 12.3k likes – and still counting.
Verification
FactCheckElections can confirm that the electoral umpire is still collating results across the country.
We can independently confirm that INEC has postponed elections in 141 polling units in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State — and Edo state.
Besides, the Electoral Act (2022) states that the winner of the presidential election will be subjected to the provisions of section 134 of the Nigerian Constitution.
“In an election to the office of the President or Governor whether or not contested and in any contested election to any other elective office, the result shall be ascertained by counting the votes cast for each candidate and subjected to the provisions of sections 133, 134 and 179 of the Constitution,” the Electoral Act reads in part.
Plus, according to the 1999 Constitution, the candidate that receives the highest number of votes shall be declared elected only if they also fulfil a quota of 25 percent of the total votes cast in about 24 states including the Federal Capital Territory.
Section 134, subsection 2, of the 199 Constitution states: “A candidate for an election to the office of President shall be deemed to have been duly elected where, there being more than two candidates for the election-he has the highest number of votes cast at the election; and he has not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election each of at least two-thirds of all the States in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.”
Extra Facts
At the time of filing this report, INEC has concluded the collation of election results in Ekiti State: the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Ahmed Tinubu declared the winner.
Also, INEC said that the result of the presidential election held across the polling units in Lagos State will be collated on Sunday.
The state Collation Officer, Prof. Adenike Oladiji, told the press late on Saturday evening while briefing journalists and election observers at INEC’s collation centre in Yaba, Lagos.
The Commission has also threatened to cancel election results of crisis-ridden areas during the presidential and National Assembly elections in Kogi State.
Available data shows that out of the 774 Local Government Areas in the country, complete results have emerged from only 22 LGAs.
Lastly, results from the three K states – Kano, Katsina and Kaduna – have not emerged. Many people believed the votes from the states could turn the waves of elections for any candidate that amassed the largest votes from the three northern states.
Conclusion
From the foregoing, it’s too early to say a candidate has won a ‘landslide’ victory in the election. All the presidential candidates are pulling votes from each polling unit and state; and as such, all claims are mere assumptions that could mislead the public.
FactCheckElections observed that the atmosphere is tense and mis/disinformation could spike violence when factual results do not favour them unlike the earlier results littering the social media space.
We have also virally shared a flier to educate the masses that INEC is the only body allowed to release election results. Any other source is considered to be false.
Therefore, the claim that ‘the Labour Party has won this election by an unprecedented nationwide landslide’ is false.