Mogaji (Hon) Seye Oladejo.
The Lagos State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has further interrogated the independent, data-driven report referenced by TheCable on December 20, 2025, and we state without equivocation that the findings offer a sobering, factual explanation for one of the most striking paradoxes of the 2023 presidential election: Peter Obi’s near-mythical dominance in the South-East and his resounding electoral collapse across the rest of Nigeria.
This is not political conjecture. It is mathematics, statistics, and electoral geography speaking plainly.
Invincibility at Home, Irrelevance Elsewhere -Explained by Data
The study establishes that:
• Anambra recorded a staggering 24.9% anomaly rate, meaning nearly one in four polling units showed multiple fraud indicators.
• Enugu followed with 16.7%, while Imo recorded 10.9%.
• These three states alone accounted for a disproportionate share of the 4,351 anomalous polling units identified nationwide -3.5% of all 123,918 polling units analysed.
By contrast:
• Lagos State, despite being the political base of the eventual winner, recorded just 2.3%.
• Oyo State recorded an almost negligible 0.3% anomaly rate.
In an election decided by margins running into hundreds of thousands of votes, such clusters of “perfect scores,” suspiciously round percentages, and statistically improbable vote distributions -2,328 of which were traced largely to LP strongholds -are not trivial. They are electorally consequential.
This statistical reality explains why Peter Obi appeared electorally invincible in his Eastern stronghold, posting implausibly dominant margins, while simultaneously suffering outright rejection across the North, South-West, South-South, and large swathes of the Middle Belt, where competitive political ecosystems made such manipulation far more difficult to execute or conceal.
Popularity Is Not a Defence Against Irregularity
The report correctly acknowledges that Peter Obi enjoyed genuine popularity in the South-East. Lagos APC does not dispute this. However, the study exposes an inconvenient but critical truth: hegemonic popularity is precisely the environment in which subtle electoral manipulation thrives.
Where opposition voices are muted or socially ostracised:
• Result sheets face less scrutiny.
• Party agents are fewer or intimidated.
• “Plausible fraud” -58% here, 65% turnout there – slips through as defensible, even when fraudulent.
Conversely, in politically pluralistic states such as Lagos, Oyo, Kaduna, and Plateau, the presence of multiple strong parties, vigilant agents, and active civil society naturally constrains such practices.
The National Verdict Was Clear
Let the record be stated plainly:
• Peter Obi secured only 29.1% of the total votes cast nationwide.
• He placed third overall, behind both APC and PDP.
• Outside the South-East, his performance was not merely weak -it was catastrophic for anyone presented as a serious national alternative.
This data-driven reality punctures the mythology of a “stolen mandate” and replaces it with a far less romantic truth: what existed was not a national movement, but a regionally concentrated surge, statistically amplified by irregularities where opportunity permitted.
Fraud Has No Party Uniform
The Lagos APC reiterates a position we have consistently maintained: electoral malpractice in Nigeria is systemic, not partisan.
The study vindicates this position by demonstrating that manipulation:
• Crossed party lines,
• Followed opportunity rather than ideology, and
• Afforded no party – including the Labour Party -any claim to moral exceptionalism.
Those who screamed loudest about being cheated must now confront an uncomfortable mirror. The regions most vociferous in alleging rigging were, by hard data, among the most compromised.
2027: The Unravelling of a Manufactured Regional Myth
Beyond the forensic dissection of the 2023 data, ongoing political alignments, re-alignments, and the lived realities of daily politics now point unmistakably in one direction: the so-called Peter Obi regional myth is already eroding and will be decisively broken in the 2027 general elections.
Recent off-season election outcomes, shifting alliances across the South-East and South-South, and the steady return of political pragmatism to spaces once animated by emotion and digital hysteria all confirm a timeless rule of democratic politics: elections are ultimately won by structure, spread, performance, and consistency -not by symbolism, sanctimony, or grievance narratives.
The data already showed that Obi’s dominance was regional, fragile, and statistically inflated in environments where scrutiny was weakest. Current political realities now show that even that regional insulation is thinning. Political actors are recalibrating. Voters are reassessing. The romance is fading.
The truth has caught up with the repeated lies.
No political career survives indefinitely on moral posturing, perpetual victimhood, or the recycling of debunked conspiracy theories. As surely as the sun rises, it also sets – and the sun will most certainly set on political careers built on illusion rather than institution, outrage rather than organisation, and regional echo chambers mistaken for national appeal.
Final Word
This report does not delegitimise Nigeria’s democracy, nor does it invalidate the 2023 election. What it does – and does powerfully – is restore honesty to a debate long polluted by emotion, misinformation, and selective outrage.
Peter Obi was not defeated by conspiracy.
He was defeated by electoral arithmetic, national spread requirements, competitive politics – and his failure to translate regional enthusiasm into national acceptability.
The Lagos State APC welcomes further independent audits, stronger technological safeguards, and the visible prosecution of offenders across all parties.
Democracy is best served not by mythology, but by truth.
And the numbers, once again, refuse to lie.
Mogaji (Hon) Seye Oladejo.
Lagos APC Spokesman
