The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has dismissed allegations of result manipulation at the Kuroko Health Centre polling unit in Yangoji ward, Kwali Area Council, during the recently concluded Federal Capital Territory (FCT) area council elections.
Following the polls held on Saturday, February 21, 2026, claims circulated on social media that the All Progressives Congress (APC) recorded 1,219 votes at the unit, despite only 345 registered voters and 213 accredited voters.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, February 24, 2026, FCT Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) Aminu Idris described the claim as “untrue and misleading.”
Idris explained that the discrepancy resulted from a clerical error by the presiding officer while recording the APC’s score.
“On tallying everything, she noticed that there was an overshoot by one. So, they had to recount the ballots in the open; that was when she realised that APC should be 121, not 122,” the statement read.
“She cancelled the ‘2’ at the end and slotted in a ‘1’ in front of the cancelled ‘2’ to make it 121. She also corrected the figures in words.”
The official result uploaded from the polling unit via the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and visible on the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) shows the APC scored 121 votes, not 1,219 as alleged.
Idris confirmed that party agents present at the unit endorsed and signed the corrected result.
He emphasized that INEC’s technological safeguards make such manipulation impossible:
“The BVAS system performs internal validation checks to ensure the total votes entered do not exceed the number of accredited voters. Overvoting is automatically flagged and cannot be finalised.”
“The number of accredited voters was 213. The score entered into the BVAS for the party concerned was 121. The total votes recorded were consistent with accreditation figures.”
Had 1,219 votes been entered, the BVAS device would have rejected the entry instantly, and the discrepancy would have been flagged during collation, he added.
“The FCT election was conducted in substantial compliance with the Electoral Act and the INEC Guidelines,” Idris concluded.
The clarification aims to address misinformation and restore public confidence in the integrity of the electoral process in the FCT.
