The Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD-West Africa) Election Analysis Centre (EAC) has said that vote buying and fake news characterised Saturday’s off-cycle governorship election in Edo State.
The Chair of CDD-EAC, Prof. Adele Jinadu, on Saturday at a briefing on the preliminary statement on the election, in Abuja, also alleged that the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and main opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) engaged in massive vote buying ranging from N5,000 to N10,000 in the presence of security agents, leading to increase in voters’ turnout.
He said the fake news included the denial of voters from using the umbrella despite the donwpour and the purported arrest of a PDP thug in Egor, which the CDD-EAC fact-checkers later found out to be the arrest of a robbery suspect in Lagos as far back as 2022.
“The heavy downpour reported in some parts of the state, and the reported prevention of people from coming to the PUs with umbrellas, may have affected turnout of voters. Another observation is the likelihood of rains damaging the paper based ballots used by INEC.
“On the morning of the election, several fake images and videos circulated across social media platforms, particular WhatsApp. CDD Countering Disinformation War Room also observed cases of old images being repurposed to spread false narratives.
“For example, the CDD War Room received an image with the claim that a thug associated with the PDP was arrested in Egor. The verification of the image by our fact checkers indicated it came from the arrest of a robbery suspect in Lagos as far back as 2022,” Prof. Jinadu said.
He said that 34% of all claims made on Election Day focused on the PDP candidate, 26% of the claims targeted the APC candidate, while 14% of the claims on Election Day focused on INEC.
“It was observed that the APC and PDP offered
