Thousands of Twitter users crowned PDP winner of the election over the APC who conducted the poll.
If a Twitter poll conducted by a controversial official account of the All Progressives' Congress (APC) is to be believed, the party is a loser in Ekiti State's gubernatorial election which was conducted today.
Residents of the state trooped to polling centres on Saturday, July 14, 2018, to cast their votes for their preferred candidates in the highly-anticipated election that has frayed nerves this week.
But before citizens got out to vote on Saturday, an (un)official Twitter account of the APC (@APCNigeria) conducted a poll asking social media users to decide which party, between the APC and the People's Democratic Party (PDP), would win Saturday's contest.
With the poll created on Wednesday, July 11, thousands of social media users cast their votes for their choice parties.
When voting closed just around 8pm on Saturday, the APC lost to the PDP as 60% of the 21,497 users that participated in the poll voted for Ekiti's current ruling party.
Saturday's election has been designated a keen contest between former Minister of Mines and Steel Development and one-time Ekiti governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi of the APC, and PDP's Prof. Kolapo Olusola, deputy to incumbent, Ayodele Fayose.
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Controversial history of APC's Twitter account
While the poll is bound to cause some embarrassment for the APC, the party has, on several occasions, dissociated itself from the operation of the account, tagging it as a privately-run one.
The party was forced to create its own official account (@OfficialAPCNg) in April 2018 after '@APCNigeria' was hijacked by hackers and used to make unsavory comments about the party and President Muhammadu Buhari. The denounced account currently has over 700,000 more followers than the party's acknowledged official account.
Earlier in June 2017, the APC was forced to publicly deny any association with the account after it conducted a poll to rate Buhari's administration and 54% of 14,532 participants rated it as 'Poor' and 33% rated it 'Average'.
The administrator of the 'rebel' Twitter account is Philip Obin, a member of the ruling party who is contesting for the position of council chairman of Biase local government area of Cross River State.