POLLING UNITS

170,000 sheets vs INEC's official results

We compared 170,000 polling unit sheets to INEC's official results.

The data was transcribed by volunteers in 5 days and used as evidence in Peter Obi's tribunal petition. We published the gap — state by state.

7,154,064

Votes in INEC results not in polling unit sheets

+44.1% nationally

State where the winner changed

Rivers — LP on sheets, APC announced

States where LP votes decreased

Rivers, Jigawa, Borno — cannot be explained by missing sheets

States with consistent results

Winner unchanged, vote shares within 1pp

National Comparison

All four major parties — polling units vs INEC

Party	Polling Units	Share	INEC Official	Share	Gap%
APC	5,928,825	36.5%	8,805,655	37.6%	+48.5%
LP	4,731,127	29.1%	6,101,533	26.1% ↓	+29%
PDP	4,555,334	28.1%	6,984,520	29.9%	+53.3%
NNPP	1,019,045	6.3%	1,496,687	6.4%	+46.9%
TOTAL	16,234,331		23,388,395		+44.1%

LP lost 3 percentage points nationally between the polling unit sheets and INEC's official announcement. It is the only major party whose vote share decreased.

The One That Changed

Rivers State — The One That Changed

On the sheets

LP 200,407 (54.9%)

APC 96,076 (26.3%)

→

INEC announced

APC 231,591 (46.6%)

LP 175,071 (35.3%)

−25,336

LP votes disappeared

+135,515

APC votes appeared

160,851

Net swing to APC

Peter Obi's LP won Rivers State at the polling unit level — 200,407 votes (54.9%) against APC's 96,076 (26.3%).

INEC announced APC won with 231,591 votes (46.6%) against LP's 175,071 (35.3%).

Between the polling unit and the collation centre:

→25,336 LP votes disappeared

→135,515 APC votes appeared

→The winner changed

LP's votes went down. A decrease cannot be explained by unreadable sheets or missing data. Votes can only decrease if they are removed.

We are not making an allegation. The tribunal dismissed Obi's petition. We are showing the data. You decide what it means.

All 37 States

State-by-state gap analysis

Click any column header to sort. Click any state to go to its detail page.

🚨Result changed

⚠️Data quality issue (excluded from analysis)

✓Consistent result

Data Quality

Four states excluded — extreme data quality issues

Four states — Sokoto, Taraba, Yobe, and Zamfara — show inflation of 2000–9000%. This is inconsistent with the pattern in other states and suggests the polling unit data for these states has quality issues. We exclude them from our gap analysis and flag them clearly on all displays.

Sokoto

+2241%

Taraba

+2937%

Yobe

+1962%

Zamfara

+4121%

Source Attribution

Data sourceMark Essien / volunteer transcription project (Feb-Mar 2023)

Sheets transcribed170,000 polling unit result sheets in 5 days

Accuracy90% (Mark Essien's estimate, after bot attack mitigation)

Coverage97% of polling units transcribed

Used as evidenceObi v INEC presidential tribunal petition, 2023

Last updatedApril 2026

Blog postmarkessien.com/posts/drama_of_transcription

Google DrivePublic dataset (all 37 states)