Nigeria election: Di unexplained Nigeria election votes wey political parties dey contest

Wen one election official read out di results of di presidential election for im area for southern Nigeria, na bad news for challengers to di ruling party candidate, Bola Tinubu.

And afta dem declare Oga Tinubu di overall winner few days later - di defeated candidates launch legal action wey dey challenge di outcome.

Now, one BBC investigation don find evidence dey suggest say dem fit don manipulate some results for di key battleground state of Rivers.

Di election official wey read out some of dis results, Dr Dickson Ariaga, neva respond to our questions.

Dis na wetin we discover wen we look into Nigeria disputed elections.

How votes dey count for Nigeria

On 25 February, Nigerians cast dia votes for thousands of polling stations across di kontri.

For each polling station, Dem publicly announce di votes for di party of each candidate and dem cari di results sheets go collation first for di ward level, then for local government (LGA) centres.

One election official from each LGA then travel to di state capital, wia dem later officially declare di results.

For di first time for any Nigerian election, di electoral commission publish photographs of di polling station results sheets.

Dis one make am possible to add up all di polling station sheets and to compare dem wit di results dem declare for di state level.

Wetin we find for Rivers state

Our team add up di voting tally sheets from ova 6,000 polling stations for Rivers state, wia dem make many of di opposition complaints.

While di official result give one clear majority to Bola Tinubu of di ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), our tally of results suggest say Peter Obi of di Labour Party (LP) don actually receive most votes for di state by one wide margin.

We find increase of just ova 106,000 for Oga Tinubu vote for di official declaration wen compared wit our polling station tally - wey almost double im total for di state.

In contrast, Oga Obi vote don fall by ova 50,000.

E dey important to make clear say although we search through di election website for every single one of di 6,866 polling stations for Rivers state, we no fit obtain results from all of dem.

Dem incorrectly upload some of dem, oda dey miss.

For about 5% of polling stations, di fotos of tally sheets dey too blurred for us to read. E dey reasonable to assume say di official count fit don include dis as dem fit don get di original documents.

For anoda 17%, dem no upload any results for di relevant polling station online. Many of dis ft don be places wey voting no happun at all sake of security issues or di non-arrival of voting materials. Odas for dis category fit don be wia technical problems don make officials no fit upload di documents.

So e dey clear say e fit get more polling stations wey dem include for di final official results, wey BBC investigation no fit include.

However, dis additional tally sheets fit only serve to increase di totals for each party, no be to decrease dem.

And wetin we find be say votes for Peter Obi Labour Party bin decrease sharply forin Rivers state - one outcome wey we no fit explain by citing di sheets wey no dey for di BBC count.

So wia be di biggest differences?

Two areas stand out.

Di first na di Oyigbo local government area, wia we find:

Di second local goment area wia we find major discrepancies na for neighbouring Obio/Akpor:

So dis differences take happun?

We bin wan wia for di process di differences for di totals fit don comot.

As explained earlier, dem collate all di polling station sheets for di local government (LGA) headquarters.

We find one official election document wit dis collated votes for di Oyibo area, wey election official and agents wey dey represent di parties sign.

Dem don take plenti fotos of am to upload on social media accounts.

Di numbers for dis document closely match our own tallies for di two leading candidates (Obi and Tinubu).

Dis fit be one of di 23 collation sheets from LGAs in Rivers state wey dem take to di state capital, Port Harcourt, for di official declaration.

Broadcast live on television on 27 February, in front of one bank of microphones, Oyigbo election official Dr Dickson Ariaga announce im name and say im work for di Federal College of Education for Omoku.

On di recording, di word "Omoku" dey indistinct, but na only one Federal College of Education dey for Rivers state.

Dr Ariaga then read out di results for each party in alphabetical order, including for all di smaller parties.

All of dem match those on di collation sheet wey di BBC don obtaine. But wen e reach Oga Tinubu's APC, instead of saying 2,731 as dem write on our photograph of di sheet, im read out "16,630".

Then for Oga Obi party (LP) di figure change again: instead of di 22,289 wey dey di sheet, im announce "10,784", more than halving im vote.

Di mystery wey surround Dickson Ariaga

We ask di electoral commission if we fit speak to Dr Ariaga but dem no give us im details or reach out to am for us.

We also try to reach am through di election official wey seat next to Dr Ariaga, but she tell us say dem no authorise her to speak to di press.

So we send one reporter to di Federal College of Education for Omoku, about two hours drive north of Port Harcourt, wia im tok say im dey work wen e introduce imself.

Di Deputy Provost Moses Ekpa tell di BBC: "From our records, both from our payroll and from our human resources, e no get such name for our system and we no sabi di pesin."

We try to track am down on social media and eventually come across one Facebook account under anoda name wey dey live for Port Harcourt wey get di name Dickson Ariaga for di URL address.

Wen we compare di profile image for dis account to di television pictures of Dr Ariaga using Amazon Rekognition software, we achieve a match of 97.2%, wey indicate a very high probability say dem be di same man.

Dr Ariaga no respond to messages wey we send to dis account.

By reaching out to im Facebook friends we finally manage to speak to one man who wey tok say im be im relative wey first tok say im go help us, but later no return calls.

Response from di electoral commission

We put dis findings to Nigeria Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec).

Johnson Sinikiem, wey be Inec regional toktok pesin for Port Harcourt told us say sake of "gross shortage of time and personnel" they'd had to take on some people without verifying their identity documents.

Referring to Dr Ariaga, e say: "If im don present imself as a lecturer from [di college for Omoku] and e no be so, then im dey dishonest."

We also approach Inec headquarters for Abuja for a response to our findings of mago-mago for election results for Rivers state. Dem tell us say dem no fit comment due to ongoing legal challenges to di election results.

Implications for di overall election

Dis na just one case for one state for southern Nigeria wia di evidence points to di results don dey manipulated.

On dia own, dia altered results fit no fit decide di outcome of di presidential election. Bola Tinubu win di overall national presidential vote by 1.8m votes ova im nearest rival, Atiku Abubakar of di PDP.

We did look elsewhere, checking the results in some local areas in the south-west and north of Nigeria, but didn't find such wide disparities as we had done in Rivers state.

We still dey find Dr Ariaga to respond to di findings inside dis report.

Additional reporting by Liana Bravo, Jemimah Herd, Jake Horton and Kumar Malhotra