…Yilwatda Says “Mimic Counting” Mere Political Drama, of No Consequence
By Yinka Giwa
National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Nentawe Yilwatda, has defended the integrity of the party’s presidential primary process following viral videos showing controversial vote-counting procedures during the exercise.
The videos, which circulated widely on social media, sparked debate after one clip showed a collation officer in Abia State appearing to skip numbers while counting votes after being prompted by Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Benjamin Kalu, to “begin your count.”
Reacting to the controversy during an interview on Arise News on Monday, Yilwatda insisted that the figures displayed in the video did not correspond with the APC’s official records from Abia State.
According to him, the party relied on data collated from the ward level and maintained that no single ward in the state had voter figures close to those being mentioned online.
“The data we have for Abia is quite different. Because the election took place at the ward level, and there is no ward in Abia State, no singular ward in Abia has 7,000 voters,” he said.
The APC chairman dismissed the viral footage as theatrics unrelated to the actual collation process, arguing that the incident had no impact on the party’s final results.
“If there was a mimic counting or a drama that took place, it didn’t affect the data of total votes,” Yilwatda stated.
“People can mimic counting at any point; people can do their drama, but I work with data.”
The controversy has added to growing scrutiny surrounding internal party elections and vote collation processes ahead of Nigeria’s 2027 political cycle.