FACT-CHECK: Video Showing INEC Officials With Pre-Written Imo Election Results Was Shot In March

A video showing INEC officials allegedly rigging Imo Election result before the conduct of polls is MISLEADING, checks by THE WHISTLER has shown.

The video which was shared on X by @DreadHound0 and reposted by other accounts was captioned, “Serious election rigging has already started in Imo State. Results are already written down in EC forms in favor of Hope Uzodinma. How ordinary, poverty stricken people like poll workers and INEC enable this level of impunity and criminality, is beyond me. Imolites please resist.”

The video showed the moment voters confronted INEC officials for bringing a pre-written election result to their polling unit, the voters were heard insisting that they would not vote until the election materials is made available.

This is against the backdrop of the ongoing off-season Imo State gubernatorial elections where incumbent governor, Hope Uzodimma of the All Progressive Congress (APC) is contesting against Senator Athan Achonu of the Labour Party (LP) and Samuel Anyanwu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)

To verify the authenticity of the video, THE WHISTLER extracted keyframes and ran several parts of it through reverse-imaging tools including Google Lens, Yandex, Baidu and Tineye. However, no match was found implying that snapshots from the video is not indexed.

However, it was observed upon closer inspection that the words ‘RIVERS STATE’ were written in one of the documents shown in the video. Also, the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System machine captured in the video was labelled 32-15-12-038.

Using INEC’s Polling Unit locator THE WHISTLER was able to trace the polling Unit to be Kesiolu Community Hall 2, Rumuigbo, in Rumuigbo Ward of Obio/Akpor Local Government, Rivers State.

With the polling unit information, this website conducted an advance search with related keywords on Twitter, limiting results to between February 25 and March 20, 2023, the period when the 2023 general elections took place.

The results turned up the first use of the video which was posted on the March 18, 2023 by an X user (@AGINAS).

The clip was originally captioned with, “This is PU 38 Ward 12 Kesiolu Town Hall Rumuigbo, Obio Apkor LGA. The INEC officials came with already used Result sheets. We have refused to cast our votes.”

This is PU 38 Ward 12 kesiorlu Town Hall Rumuigbo, Obio Apkor LGA. The INEC officials came with already used Result sheets. We have refused to cast our votes. pic.twitter.com/KPsMRlTVyV

— Lifeissues11 (@AGINAS) March 18, 2023

VERDICT: The use of the video to depict alleged electoral malpractice in the off-season elections in Imo State is MISLEADING, the video was shot and first published in March, eight months before the Imo State gubernatorial polls.