The Lagos State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has said that it will not allow “the opposition to rig the forthcoming elections under any guise, emotional blackmail, or revisionist storytelling.”
Speaking through its Publicity Secretary in Lagos State, Mogaji (Hon) Seye Oladejo, the party said in a statement issued on Wednesday said it has “Found it imperative to, once again, interrogate the recently published independent statistical analysis of Nigeria’s 2023 general elections, which decisively punctures the long-running falsehood that electoral irregularities were the exclusive handiwork of the ruling party.”
Oladejo said in the statement that the study, conducted as part of a Data Science master’s thesis at Pan-Atlantic University and based on an examination of over 123,000 polling units nationwide, “Established a fact the opposition has desperately tried to bury: electoral malpractice in 2023 was not a one-party affair.
On the contrary, the highest concentration of statistically significant irregularities occurred in Labour Party strongholds, particularly in parts of the South-East.”
The Publicity Secretary said that while Lagos State, the political home of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, recorded an anomaly rate of just 2.3%, “states loudly marketed as victims of rigging posted disturbing figures: Anambra at 24.9%, Enugu at 16.7%, and Imo at 10.9%.
These are not marginal discrepancies or clerical errors; they are red flags of industrial-scale manipulation hiding in plain sight.”
He said: “Of particular note is the report’s finding that the Labour Party accounted for a disproportionate number of so-called ‘perfect scores’ – suspiciously neat vote distributions that betray deliberate engineering rather than organic voter behaviour.
Despite securing less than one-third of the national vote, LP strongholds generated more statistical alarm bells than those of any other party.
“This revelation completely demolishes the tired propaganda that Nigeria’s 2023 election was “rigged from Aso Rock.”
“What the data shows instead is something far more uncomfortable for the opposition: manipulation followed opportunity, not ideology, and some of the loudest accusers were themselves beneficiaries of the very practices they decried.”
He added that Lagos APC welcomes the study’s broader conclusion that while the 2023 election was neither catastrophically fraudulent nor impeccably clean, electoral malpractice has evolved into subtler, more deceptive forms.
“This reality underscores the need for vigilance – not selective outrage – as Nigeria prepares for future elections.
“Let it be stated without ambiguity: the APC will not allow the opposition to rig the forthcoming elections under any guise, emotional blackmail, or revisionist storytelling.
“Having failed to overturn the will of Nigerians through the ballot, the opposition must not be permitted to rehearse the same script of manipulation, denial, and post-election hysteria.
“We strongly support credible reforms, including independent audits of election data, real-time result transmission, improved technical capacity for the electoral umpire, and the visible prosecution of electoral offenders – regardless of party affiliation.
“Democracy is not preserved by noise, street sermons, or manufactured victimhood; it is protected by facts, fairness, and firm enforcement of the rules.
“The era of weaponising false narratives to pre-empt defeat is over. Nigerians are wiser, the data is clearer, and the APC remains fully committed to defending the integrity of the ballot before, during, and after every election,” he said.
