The Independent National Electoral Commission has dismissed claims circulating online that 1,219 votes were recorded for a political party at Kuroko Health Centre polling unit in Yangoji Ward, Kwali Area Council, during Saturday’s Area Council election in the Federal Capital Territory.
In a press release issued on February 24, 2026, and signed by the FCT Resident Electoral Commissioner, Aminu K. Idris, the commission described the allegation as false and misleading, explaining that the controversy arose from a clerical mistake which was promptly corrected at the polling unit.
The commission said the figure in dispute stemmed from an error made by the Presiding Officer while entering the party’s score. It stated that the issue was investigated, and the officer involved was contacted for clarification.
Quoting the report of the officer who interrogated her, INEC said:
“I have spoken to the Presiding Officer. She recounted her experience. She said after sorting and counting the ballots, she recorded 122 for APC.
“On tallying everything, she noticed that there was an overshoot by one (1). So they had to recount the ballots in the open, and that was when she realised that APC should be 121, not 122. So 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.”
INEC maintained that the officially recorded and uploaded result from the polling unit showed that the party scored 121 votes, not 1,219 as alleged on social media. It added that the clearer version of the result is available on its Result Viewing Portal for public scrutiny.
The commission further stated that party agents present at the unit confirmed the corrected figure and signed the result sheet. It noted that the same score of 121 was entered into the Ward Collation form EC8B and used at both the Ward and Area Council collation stages.
On the safeguards built into its technology, INEC explained that the Presiding Officer is required to capture and upload an image of the completed Form EC8A to the portal and also enter party scores directly into the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System device. The system, it said, conducts validation checks to ensure that total votes do not exceed the number of accredited voters and that entries are mathematically consistent, while over-voting is automatically flagged and cannot be finalised.
In the case under reference, the commission disclosed that 213 voters were accredited, and the score entered for the party concerned in the BVAS was 121, which tallied with the total votes recorded and the figures used during collation.
Responding to what it described as the claim of “mathematical impossibility,” INEC stated that if a figure of 1,219 votes had been entered, the BVAS device would have rejected the entry instantly, the total votes cast would have reflected such an inflated number, and discrepancies would have been flagged at various collation stages. It said none of these occurred because the official score was 121.
The electoral body reassured the public that the portal mirrors results uploaded directly from polling units and that the BVAS-driven validation process prevents over-voting and numerical alteration at source. It added that other results cited on social media were cross-checked in line with the Electoral Act before collation and declaration.
INEC said the FCT election was conducted in substantial compliance with the Electoral Act and its guidelines, urging members of the public and media commentators to verify information with official records before concluding capable of eroding public confidence in the process.
The commission reiterated its commitment to transparency and accountability, noting that where genuine mistakes occur, they are investigated and addressed. It stressed that the present allegation arose from a genuine error that was immediately corrected and that the misinterpretation of figures does not reflect the official record used in collating and declaring the results.
