New revelations have emerged detailing how jailed university professor, Prof. Peter Ogban, manipulated votes in an attempt to fraudulently boost the chances of All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Godswill Akpabio, in the 2019 Akwa Ibom North-West Senatorial election.
Testimonies presented in court and corroborated by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) officials revealed that Prof. Ogban, who served as the Returning Officer for the election, deliberately altered result figures from two local government areas—Etim Ekpo and Oruk Anam. According to witnesses, these alterations involved inflating vote counts for Akpabio while suppressing those of his opponent, Senator Chris Ekpenyong of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The electoral manipulation, as outlined in court proceedings, included the illegal allocation of over 5,000 votes to the APC candidate in Oruk Anam, one of the local governments where PDP had a clear lead. INEC officials testified that the figures Prof. Ogban announced at the senatorial collation centre did not match the official results compiled at the local level.
Prof. Ogban was subsequently convicted in 2021 by an Akwa Ibom State High Court and sentenced to three years imprisonment for falsifying electoral results. Despite claims by Akpabio’s camp that the manipulation worked against him, evidence and witness accounts have now confirmed that the tampering was intended to secure a win for the former Senate Minority Leader.