Nri Ward 1 had 900 accredited voters, but the returning officer announced 958 votes total:
- Prince C Oli- 900- Tochukwu Ibekie – 34
- Chisson – 20
- Okoye C – 4
That’s 58 more votes than accredited delegates. Under INEC regulations and APGA’s primary guidelines, accreditation is the hard cap. You can’t legally declare more valid votes than accredited voters. When it happens, the standard remedy is cancellation of that polling unit/ward result for over-voting.
Why this matters beyond the numbers:
1. *Legal precedent*: Nigerian courts and election tribunals have voided results where votes cast exceed accreditation. INEC’s own regulations treat it as invalid. APGA has had primaries nullified in the past for similar irregularities before.
2. *Delegate trust*: If accreditation means nothing, there’s no reason for delegates to show up, verify, or defend the process next time.
3. *Litigation risk*: Declaring a result with a 58-votes over-vote hands opposing aspirants a clean ground to get the whole primary nullified. That’s how primaries get thrown out weeks before the general election.
Proposed fixes:
- Cancel Nri Ward 1 outright. Set aside the tainted result so it can’t be aggregated into the constituency total.
- *Exclude the RO’s*: Standard disciplinary step if they can’t account for the discrepancy.
Whether APGA acts on it depends on the Electoral Panel’s willingness to enforce its own rules now, before it becomes a court problem later. Letting it stand signals to every ward that the numbers can be adjusted after accreditation.
DNA Federal Constituency: What happened in Nri Ward 1 was Arithmetic Fraud Dressed in Democracy.
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