Fact check: Binani’s latest false statistical claims about Adamawa governorship polls.

The governorship candidate of the All Progressive Congress in Adamawa, Aishatu Binani, has made another series of inaccurate claims since the election.

In late March 2023, THE FINDER fact-checked Binani’s false and misleading claims made post-election to Adamawa voters in Yola. In a video that went around social media, Binani said that the PDP was stuffing ballot boxes in a building in Yola, which turned out to be a PDP situation room. She also said three other things that were not true.

Binani and the rigging claims

In a video that went viral on social media right after the polls closed on March 18, 2023, Binani called the police to report that the PDP was thumb printing ballots in Yola, which is the capital of Adamawa state. “She led the security agencies to cordon off the building at the wee hours of the night, and a search was conducted on the said building.”

Facts first: This claim is false. The building identified by the Binani campaign organization as being used for rigging is only a situation room, which is why many APC sympathizers believed her claims. They failed to realise, however, that the BVAS machine and the IREV technology, which enable polling officials of the INEC to upload results on the IREV immediately after votes counting at the polling units, have changed the old order of ballot stuffing by political parties or their agents.

Binani and Fufore false results.

In another section of the speech, Binani stated, “We won Fufore, and the PDP and the governor have trimmed our votes.”

Facts first: This claim is inaccurate even if you ignore Binani’s accusation that the PDP trimmed down her results in Furfore. According to security and INEC sources, there is no local government in Nigeria, apart from Kano and Lagos, that has accredited voters up to the 67,000 votes the APC candidate claims to have garnered in the Fufore local government. Binani and her campaign made bogus claims of vote suppression without recourse to the accuracy data on the BVAS machine. How they arrived at vote reduction in Fufore is unknown since the result sheets are uploaded on INEC IREV portals. After reviewing the results on the INEC IREV portals, the APC candidate continued her false claims that the results from Fufore are inaccurate and therefore called for the review of sixteen local government results, which many believe is medicine after death as the APC agents at the state collation centre raised no objection during the presentation of results from about 18 local governments in Adamawa.

Violence and thuggery mar the governorship polls in Adamawa.

Binani made a confusing remark about polls in Adamawa being marred with violence, overvoting, and thuggery.

She said the election in Adamawa is marred by violence, the chasing away of APC party agents at the polling unit level, overvoting, and thuggery.”

First facts: neither the media nor the security agencies have heard of any violence or thuggery in Adamawa during the March 18 governorship elections. THE FINDER investigation shows that the only fracas recorded in Adamawa is in Fufore local councils, where APC political thugs invaded the collation office and hijacked the result sheets to pave way for the preplanned insertion of a new collation result that will alter the status quo, forgetting that all the polling units are on the IREV, which can be accessed by the public

The 37,000 or 67,000 votes

Binani repeated a false number of 37,000 or 67,000 made up from Fufore that the opposition wants to use to cover up the large gap between the PDP candidate, Fintiri, and the APC. Binani and her supporters rushed to INEC to ask for a review, but they forgot that neither the PDP nor Fintiri asked for a review of the Fufore local government results. Instead, INEC decided to do an IREV because there is disagreement between the political parties.

Facts First: Once again, Binani’s 37,000 or 67,000 Fufore vote claim is incorrect. For the third time in less than a month, Binani inaccurately gave herself a victory in a poll. After realising the significant gap between her and her opponent, she claims to be flawed.With the accreditation data obtained from INEC, the total number of accredited voters in Fufore is less than 50,000, standing at 47,671. How possibly did she get more votes than the accredited voters in Fufore?

“Binani’s numbers are way too high, according to senior INEC officials that spoke to this medium on the condition of anonymity, though our INEC source also said we don’t know precisely what led to the 37,000 or 67,000 vote claims, because the votes can not be more than accreditation, even if the 37,000 or 67,000 vote claim is anything to go by. Then the commission will have to cancel the entire batch of votes from Fufore because they are not in accordance with the commission guidelines and the electoral act.

Conclusion

Binani’s claims of vote suppression, voter intimidation, and result alteration in Adamawa are false.