‘Obidients’ Close Alternative Result Collation Portal After Tinubu’s Lead

The Obidents, supporters of Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate Peter Obi, have reportedly closed an alternative collation portal.

Supporters of former Anambra State Governor Obi had set up a website to collect results from across the country in order to prove that Obi had won the presidential election on February 25th, 2023.

The supporters, led by one Mark Essien, with the Twitter handle @markessien, claimed that INEC’s Bimodal Voter Accreditation System and Election Result Viewing Portal were not used, and that true election results from different polling units across the country were not uploaded to the portal.

According to Essien, the first set of results compiled with the assistance of other supporters of Obi’s presidential ambition revealed that Obi was clearly in the lead.

He tweeted on Thursday;

The way things are going, by tomorrow, we would have counted 160,000 polling unit results and done our own collation. All collation officers that thought they could announce anything they wanted did not understand the power of a mass movement.

However, problems arose after the results showed that Tinubu had received more votes than Obi and Atiku combined and was in the lead, contrary to expectations.

Following the news, some Obidents accused Essien of working for Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai rather than Obi’s cause.

Leading the attack on Essien, a Twitter user with the handle @AfamDeluxo wrote;

Mark Essien is deeply into Nasiru El-rufai’s pocket. Trust whatever you think he is doing for the obidient movement at your own peril. You can go ahead and trust him, that’s fine, I don’t anyone that is friends, or crony with the high and mighty in the APC. Especially someone like Nasiru El-rufai. Never!

However, the independent IReV portal’s results were later blocked from public view, a development that sparked reactions from Twitter users.

A user, @celestocalculus, said, “Take Mr. Essien’s poll & its eventual result with a pinch of salt. Here’s why: if he’s sourcing the forms from IReV online records, then it’s already sus to begin with. Why? Those records weren’t uploaded from the PU, so they had ample time to beat it up to fit their numbers.”

He added, “I know he’s blocked the results from the public but as at right now, 11:18 pm this is what it is. The game is to swing public trust to the website. Build anticipation by hiding the result, then show the final outcome, [maybe] as presented by [the now mostly clear] IReV uploads.

“Finally, it’s really just smokes and mirrors ladies and gents. The game is the game! Allow the Labour Party legal team to do their work and disregard all these distractions, that we all keep looking for to boost our validation.”

@AsiwajuOladimej wrote, “Essien was a good guy when he started the Collation and LP was leading. By the time the result wasn’t going in their favour, they said he is working for APC and El Rufai. Soludo will always be right. Headless Mob”

@Sholexx_ wrote, “Obidient dey their own dey nurse their wound. You carry your oversabi say you wan audit Irev results and assured them that Obi won the election. Now, the audit is not “mathing” as you’ve anticipated. You must collect from both Obidient and Agbado hand today.”

@MrOdanz wrote, “So these people were losing at the collation centre they set up for themselves after tallying 90% of the results? I heard they’ve shut it down based on “legal advice” because the results isn’t resulting to what they want.

“Few days ago they were cheering their own INEC chairman (Mark Essien) who wanted to prove to them that their mandate was stolen. Now that the result isn’t going according to plan, they have turned on their INEC Chairman, accusing him of being a saboteur sent by El-Rufai.

“This was the last result from their own collation center. They have suspended collation for now. Only positive thing from this their independent election is that it is clear PDP stole second position from them.”