UPDATED: Wike challenges Obi’s supporters to produce result sheet showing he won Rivers in 2023 - Premium Times Nigeria

The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, has challenged supporters of Peter Obi to produce the official result sheet showing that the Labour Party candidate won Rivers State in the 2023 presidential election.

Mr Wike dismissed claims by Obi’s supporters, popularly known as Obidients, that their candidate won the state, saying the claim existed only in their imagination.

The former Rivers State governor spoke on Monday during an interview on TVC’s Journalists’ Hangout, where he was asked about his political influence in the state and the claim that Mr Obi won Rivers in 2023.

“They won by their own imagination. Who did INEC declare to have won?” Mr Wike said.

He challenged those who dispute the declared result to produce the evidence on which they based their claim.

“Let them produce that result sheet that says Obi won,” he said.

Mr Wike also questioned why Mr Obi’s supporters did not establish their claim during the legal challenge to the 2023 presidential election.

“When they went to the tribunal, were they able to defend their claim?” he asked.

The minister said claims made on social media could not determine the winner of an election.

“You can win on social media; I’m not interested in social media winning,” he said.

He argued that the outcome of the election could not be determined from results or observations from a limited number of polling units in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.

“You don’t stay in one place in Port Harcourt and say Obi has won,” he said.

Mr Wike pointed out that Rivers has 23 local government areas and said the overall result had to be considered before declaring a winner.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress the winner of the 25 February 2023 presidential election in Rivers.

In Rivers, Mr Tinubu polled 231,591 votes, while Mr Obi scored 175,071 votes. The Peoples Democratic Party candidate (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, came third with 88,468 votes.

The figures were based on results collated from all 23 local government areas in the state. Tinubu won 14 of the LGAs, Obi won five, and Atiku won four.

Mr Obi’s supporters have, however, continued to dispute the result, citing individual polling unit results and alleging irregularities during the collation process.

Mr Wike was the governor of Rivers when the 2023 presidential election was held. Although he was a member of the PDP, he backed Mr Tinubu, who was then the APC presidential candidate.

Mr Tinubu subsequently won Rivers with a margin of 56,520 votes over Mr Obi.

Mr Wike has repeatedly attributed Mr Tinubu’s victory in the state to the political structure he controlled at the time.

However, PREMIUM TIMES reviewed presidential election results uploaded to INEC’s Results Viewing Portal (IReV) for Rivers State and found a major discrepancy in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area. While INEC’s declared figures showed Bola Tinubu winning the LGA with 80,239 votes against Peter Obi’s 3,829, PREMIUM TIMES’ tally of results from 1,116 of the area’s 1,211 polling units found that the Labour Party candidate actually recorded 73,311 votes, compared with 17,158 for the APC. The reviewed polling units represented about 94.13 per cent of the LGA’s polling units.

This newspaper also reported instances of apparent alterations and mutilations on some result sheets, including figures being changed in favour of the APC, although its tally used the figures as they appeared on the uploaded sheets.

The discrepancy was significant because Mr Obi had been leading Mr Tinubu across Rivers before the Obio/Akpor results were announced. With results from 21 of the state’s 23 LGAs, Mr Obi had 169,414 votes against Mr Tinubu’s 148,979, a lead of more than 20,000 votes.

The INEC-announced Obio/Akpor figures, however, dramatically reversed that position and contributed to Mr Tinubu being declared the winner in Rivers, with 231,591 votes against Obi’s 175,071. Mr Wike hails from the local government area and once served as its chairman.

PREMIUM TIMES’ review therefore concluded that the IReV results it examined indicated Mr Obi, rather than Mr Tinubu, had won the state, while noting that some results were missing, illegible or improperly uploaded and that the newspaper could not independently tally every polling unit.