Mahmood Yakubu, Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and Returning Officer for the presidential election, said on Monday evening that the collation of results would begin today at 11 a.m. after INEC had received the results of 14 states.
On Sunday, Mr Yakubu was provided with the Findings of the Ekiti. On Monday, he was informed of the outcomes of the elections held in the states of Kwara, Osun, Ondo, Ogun, Oyo, Yobe, Enugu, Lagos, Gombe, Jigawa, Adamawa, Katsina, and Nasarawa.
In spite of this, the collation officer for any other state was not present. As a consequence, Mr Yakubu said that the process would end for the day and begin again at eleven in the morning on Tuesday when the results from more states would have been received.
At this point, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, has been victorious in six different states. These states are Jigawa, Oyo, Ogun, Ondo, and Kwara.
Atiku Abubakar, the candidate for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), is now in the lead in five different states. These states are Katsina, Adamawa, Gombe, Yobe, and Osun.
In the meanwhile, Peter Obi, the candidate for the Labour Party (LP), has won the elections in Nasarawa, Lagos, and Enugu.
As of Tuesday, Rabiu Kwankwaso and the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) did not win any of the states that were reported to the INEC Chairman as winners.
While the relevant INEC authorities in several other states have already proclaimed the results of their states, they have not yet been delivered to Mr Yakubu in Abuja.
Earlier on in the process of tallying the votes, agents working for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labor Party (LP) walked out of the centre where the results were being tallied in protest of INEC’s failure to upload the results of all polling units before the tallying of the votes continued.
Both parties said that the election law requires all results to be submitted to the INEC result Viewing Portal (IReV) prior to the results being compiled into a final tally.
The Chairman of INEC stressed, however, that the process may go even if the results were not posted.
As of Monday evening, less than 60 per cent of the result sheets from throughout Nigeria had been posted. Across the country.
Festus Okoye, the official INEC’s National Commissioner for Voter Education, said on Sunday that technical difficulties were to be blamed for the delay to post the results.
Nevertheless, the Chairman of INEC said that he will make a statement on the uploading of results today.
The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) levelled these allegations against INEC at a news conference held later on Tuesday.