Posts falsely claim Nigeria’s Labour Party did not register monitors for majority of polling stations

“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 (sic),” reads a tweet published on February 20, 2023.

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A screenshot of the false tweet, taken on February 21, 2023

Retweeted more than 130 times, the tweet was shared by a known supporter of Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate of Nigeria’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

Tinubu, Labour Party’s Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) are the leading candidates looking to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari.

According to INEC, there are 176,846 polling stations. Elections will not take place at 240 sites because they have no registered voters.

But the claim that the Labour Party does not have polling agents in 75% of the polling stations is false.

Labour agents

According to figures published by INEC, the Labour Party party has 134,874 registered polling agents for 176,606 polling units where voters will cast ballots.

This means the party will be able to monitor 76 percent of the operating stations.

Several parties have registered more agents than the Labour Party: the leading opposition PDP has 176,588 agents, the APC has 176,223 agents, and New Nigerian People’s Party has 176,200 agents.

While not mandatory, the roles of polling station agents are important to the parties, with each expected to “appoint one person as its polling agent for each polling unit,” according to the INEC website.

“Only a polling agent whose name had been submitted to the commission in the prescribed manner shall receive a copy of the result sheet at a polling unit or Collation Centre.”

Election officials must read out loudly “votes scored by each political party in the presence of the polling agents”.