An Akwa Ibom State High Court sitting in Ikot Ekpene has sentenced Peter Ogban, a professor of soil science at the University of Calabar, to three years in prison for manipulation election results.

Ogban was the returning officer in the Senatorial Election held in Akwa Ibom north-west in 2019.

He was first arraigned in November 2020 after being accused of rigging the election in favour of Godswill Akpabio, then-APC candidate.

INEC had said in a statement issued then: “He changed the outcome of the election by reducing the score of a leading candidate by a huge five thousand (5,000) votes and increasing the losing candidate’s score by the same margin without altering the overall total valid votes cast to avoid detection.

“Unfortunately for him, there is no perfect crime as the early information trigger tracking system of the Electoral Operation Support Centre (EOSC), fully activated throughout the period of the election exposed him.”

The commission is also prosecuting Ignatius Uduk, another professor who worked in the election, for alleged unlawful generation of results.

It had said Uduk from the University of Uyo “declared election results collated not by him, but by undisclosed individuals who only handed them to him to announce.”

During a cross section in January by the prosecuting counsel, the court discovered that some 5,000 fake votes were added to the APC’s score in Oruk Anam, in the election.

The professor also admitted he and the PDP agent signed the result sheet but denied manipulating the result.

“I did not extract information from exhibit 2 before filling exhibit 3. I filled exhibit 3 from what was read out to me by the local government area returning officer,” he said.

The court, however, found him guilty of altering results of the election to favour the APC against the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).