Social media is rife with claims that Peter Obi, the presidential candidate for the Labour Party (LP), actually won the recently held elections.
These claims follow the controversy surrounding the results announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which named Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner.
A user claimed in this tweet, which has received over 30,000 likes and has been viewed more than 700,000 times, that on the IReV (INEC Result Viewing) portal, Peter Obi defeated Bola Tinubu decisively.
It stated that the APC won in seven states, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in eight, and the Labour Party (LP) in 19 including the FCT.
Investigation
The CDD War Room looked into the IREV claim and discovered that, as of the time of this report, only 163,311 of the 176,846 polling units had been uploaded, leaving 13,535 polling units unaccounted for.
Therefore, inferring anything about the number of states won by the four leading parties would be presumptuous. Until the 13,535 missing polling units are added to the portal, a conclusion on states won using IReV data cannot be conclusively made.
Although the Labour Party had filed a lawsuit challenging the election results, no official statement has been made to invalidate the INEC declaration from March 1, 2023.
According to results announced by INEC, Peter Obi won in 11 states and the FCT, while his two top contenders — Bola Tinubu of the APC and Atiku Abubakar of the PDP — won in 12 states each.
Verdict
The claim that the Labour Party won the election is at best misleading. There is not enough evidence from IReV portal to show Obi won in 19 states and the FCT.
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