Claim: A viral post on Twitter asserts that the Labour Party does not have agents for Saturday’s election.
Verdict: FALSE. INEC list of agents submitted by political parties for the 2023 general elections shows Labour Party has 134,874 PU agents and 4,859 collation agents.
Full Text
In less than three days, Nigerians across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory would file out at the various Polling Units (PU) nationwide to choose the next president.
During the elections, political parties deploy their agents to PUs to observe the electoral process, monitor the conduct of election officials, and safeguard the integrity of the election.
The role of political party agents is crucial as they represent the interest of their party at the polling station, ensuring that the election is free, fair, and credible.
In anticipation of the elections on Saturday, a viral tweet by Pastor Who (@PastorMarvy) alleged that Labour Party will not have agents at most polling units during the elections on Saturday.
The post read, “The Labour Party will not have polling agents in over 75% of the polling units in the country. I mean, nobody will monitor their votes in 135,740 polling units on Saturday. I sincerely apologize to Gringory, Obidients and Labour Party for thinking that they are a serious entity!”
Other users made a big fuss about this; for instance, Rinu Oduala (@SavvyRinu) tweeted that this narrative that LP has insufficient agents to cover the election is the work of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
She noted that LP has over 130,000 polling absents across Nigeria.
“PDAPC came together in their usual fashion today to spread fake news against LP. The party has 130,000+ polling agents across the country. To do this in barely eight months, give PO and the Obedient movement their flowers abeg!” She wrote.
The controversy and possible tension this could stir with the election close by prompted us to verify this claim.
Verification
To verify this claim, we checked the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) official Twitter handle, INEC Nigeria (@inecnigeria) and found that the commission posted a summary of the list of polling unit and collation centres agents submitted by different parties.
The list reveals that the Labour Party has a total of 134,874 PU agents and 4,859 Collation agents across the country.
In another development, the African Democratic Congress (ADC) endorsed the Labour Party Presidential candidate Peter Obi and his running mate, Datti Baba-Ahmed, for the February 25 presidential election as reported here, here and here.
The ADC also announced through its official Twitter handle African Democratic Congress (@ADCNig) following a coalition formation.
The post reads, “The African Democratic Congress, ADC cordially invites you to her PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE’S ENDORSEMENT @PeterObi EVENT held today, February 20, 2023.
To watch the event LIVE, kindly follow our Facebook page African Democratic Congress HQ https://facebook.com/ADCNig?mibextid=ZbWKwL.”
If with this endorsement, ADC makes available its PU agents (96,043) and collation agents (3,626), then the LP will cover more grounds.
Conclusion
The claim that the Labour Party does not have agents for the Saturday election is false. INEC, through its official Twitter account, confirmed this by releasing a list of agents submitted by political parties.
The researcher produced this fact-check per the DUBAWA 2023 Kwame KariKari Fellowship partnership with BONews to facilitate the ethos of “truth” in journalism and enhance media literacy in the country.