Months after the September 21, governorship election in Edo State, a former minister of Aviation, Ostia Chidoka has accused the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of rigging the poll.
Chidoka alleged that the electoral body masterminded an elaborate scheme to rig the poll in favour of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The former minister made the allegation while speaking on Channels Television on Saturday.
According to Chidoka, the election in Edo was a sham conducted by INEC.
Providing data on the alleged manipulation by INEC, Chidoka said there were shocking discrepancies in the election results.
He alleged that INEC inflated the number of accredited voters by over 100,000 in 798 polling units.
His words, “Presiding officers recorded 580,000 accredited voters, yet INEC’s backend magically produced 687,000. This wasn’t an accident; it was deliberate tampering,” he said. According to him, PDP votes were slashed by 11,665 during collation, while 32,284 votes were illegally added to APC’s tally.
Even more damning, Chidoka said, were the inconsistencies between INEC’s certified results and the data uploaded to its Result Viewing Portal (IReV). “Someone at INEC printed fake result sheets and wrote the outcome they wanted. This isn’t just incompetence; it’s fraud on a massive scale,” he declared.
The former minister claimed that when invalid votes and manipulations were removed, PDP candidate Barr. Asue Ighodalo emerged as the rightful winner. However, he refused to officially recognize the result, citing the sheer scale of rigging. “What happened in Edo wasn’t an election—it was a travesty. If this stands, there’s no point in having elections in 2027.”
In a dramatic twist, Chidoka announced his resignation from the PDP, saying he wants to focus fully on fighting for electoral reform without being tied to partisan politics. “Nothing else is as important to me right now as the defense of our democracy,” he stated.
Chidoka’s revelations have sparked outrage and intensified calls for the judiciary to intervene. “The courts must act. INEC has betrayed public trust, and our democracy is on life support,” he warned. The question now is whether Nigeria’s judiciary will step in to salvage the integrity of the electoral process—or allow this “stolen election” to stand.
