On Thursday, June 15, a statement was made by Austin Nwabufo (@AustinNwabufo), a Twitter user, asserting that Professor Mahmood Yakubu, the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), appeared in court and acknowledged the declaration of blurred results in thousands of polling units.
Nwabufo further alleged that Prof. Yakubu mentioned the absence of 20,000 results and implicated former president Muhammadu Buhari as an accomplice in the purported electoral misconduct
INEC Chairman didn’t admit to declaring blurred results: Fact check report.
Nigeria has a long history of vote rigging, though INEC said new technology would help curtail electoral malpractice. Still, it didn’t.
Nwabufo, who has over 22, 000 followers, wrote on his handle:
“Hot News; INEC chairman testifies in court admitted declaring blurred results in 18088, with additional 20,000 results which he Yakub Mahmoud suspected that the results will likely belong to Tinubu and APC, so he awarded all the votes to Tinubu, end of discussion, you see that INEC Chairman is a CRIMINAL.
“The 20, 000 results he claimed that were missing are the 20,000 results Sheet which Buhari demanded for it for safe keeping and never returned it, meaning that Buhari is a fantastic Criminal, a tremendous ROGUE, a NIGER Republic pickpocket.”
Hot News; INEC chairman testifies in Court, admitted declaring blurred results in 18088, with additional 20,000 results which he Yakub Mahmoud suspected that the results will likely belong to Tinubu and APC, so he awarded all the votes to Tinubu, end of discussion, you see
— Austin Nwabufo (@AustinNwabufo) June 15, 2023
The 20, 000 results he claimed that were missing are the 20,000 results Sheet which Buhari demanded for it for safe keeping and never returned it, meaning that Buhari is a fantastic Criminal, a tremendous ROGUE, a NIGER Republic pickpocket
— Austin Nwabufo (@AustinNwabufo) June 15, 2023
The tweet has garnered over 130,000 views and has already received more than 730 retweets.
However, a fact-checking platform called Dubawa published a report on Thursday, June 22, revealing that the claim made in the tweet is untrue. The report clarified that the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) did not confess to declaring blurred results, as the tweet suggested.
Dubawa stated that the INEC Chairman was not personally present at the tribunal on Thursday, June 15, but instead sent a representative. This representative presented the EC9, EC8D, EC8DA, and Certified True Copies of the presidential IReV polling units results from all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). These results had already been compiled during the presidential election.
The issue of “blurred results” arose when the Labour Party (LP), with the assistance of a hired data analyst, submitted analyzed blurred results from the presidential IReV results obtained from 18,088 polling units. The party sought to have these results admitted as evidence in court, which the court accepted, according to a report by Premium Times.