A top Nigerian television station, African Independent Television, AIT, owned by DAAR Communications, has been accused of lying about its online presidential poll it pulled down after it alleged that supporters of the All Progressives Congress, APC, compromised the integrity of the system.
The station, in a press statement on Thursday, alleged that the opinion poll was maliciously compromised in favour of Muhammadu Buhari, presidential candidate of the APC, which was why it abruptly pulled it down.
“General Mohammed Buhari had taken a massive lead in the online poll being conducted by Africa Independent Television’s website where he led President Goodluck Jonathan by 77% to 21% prompting the technical team of the AIT poll to conduct an integrity test on the results at midnight,” AIT said in the statement.
“Suspicions that the poll was compromised where [sic] first muted when it emerged the number of unique IP addresses was significantly less than the number of votes polled,” the station added.
The organisation, to buttress its claim, released a spreadsheet file, which supposedly showed the doctored votes.
But, the Executive Director of Nigeria’s Paradigm Initiative, Gbenga Sesan, via his Twitter handle, after privately conducting an investigation into the claim and the file, alleged that AIT lied about the whole issue.
“What AIT won’t tell you about the CSV file shared with other media houses, along with their statement, is that it’s easy to edit columns,” Sesan tweeted.
He challenged AIT “to release the CSV file with all erring IP addresses, and let’s trace those IPs to see where they lead.”
He asked AIT to apologise to Buhari and the APC. “In conclusion, AIT, you owe Buhari and APC apologies. The management of Daar Communications PLC lied. Apologise NOW,” he said.
