A polling unit with only 48 accredited voters in Ward 4, Brass Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, recorded a total of 1078 cast votes, according to the result-viewing portal of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

According to information on the IReV portal, the Isele-Ama Open Space Polling Unit had only 48 accredited voters.

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FIJ, however, observed that this did not match the data on the uploaded result sheet. Information on the result sheet showed that Isele-Ama Open Space accredited 1093 voters and recorded 1078 cast votes.

On the IReV portal, the commission indicated that the accreditation figures may not be final until synchronisation of the devices used in the polling units was completed. This implies that accreditation numbers are uploaded per accredited individual or in batches.

However, during voter sensitisation, INEC, on several occasions, said that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) does not upload information in real time. Information from the BVAS is only uploaded after the electoral process has been completed.

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The commission’s information and voter education committee chairman, Festus Okoye, also said in an interview that accreditation data stored on the BVAS would be uploaded alongside the result sheets.

“The original result will be what will be scanned and uploaded to our INEC Result Viewing Portal for public viewing. Not only that, the accreditation data that has arisen from that polling unit will also be uploaded, but the physical result and the BVAS itself will also be taken to the Registration Area Collation centre.” 

Furthermore, long after the elections were concluded in the Isele-Ama Open Space Polling Unit and the results were uploaded, the discrepancy in accreditation numbers remained.

Out of the 1093 cast votes, Timipre Sylva, the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, scored 1026, while the People’s Democratic Party’s Douye Diri scored 49 votes.

The Labour Party (LP) and Social Demonstration Party (SDP) scored two and one vote, respectively.