Results from a recent analysis carried out by the Financial Times, using two separate groups of voter data, have revealed that Congo’s opposition leader and presidential candidate, Martin Fayulu, was the clear winner of the controversial December polls, following the detection of election fraud.

Contradicting the result put forward by the country’s official electoral commission, CENI, which declared Felix Tshisekedi of the Coalition for Change party as the winner of the 2018 elections, the analysis examined 86% of total votes cast across the country and revealed that Fayulu led the polls with 59.4% of the votes, while Tshisekedi, who had previously been declared winner, came in second place with just 19%.

The second set of data analysed by the Financial Times showed similar results. Sample data collected by about 40,000 observers deployed by the Catholic Church during the elections, representing about 43% of total voter turnout, showed Fayulu in the lead, again, with 62.8% of the votes casted.

The results were gathered from across 28,733 polls across the country.

However, an anonymous informant from Fayulu’s camp revealed the existence of a larger spreadsheet, containing about 49,000 records with true electronically obtained results that authorities have sought out to conceal from the people and other observers.

According to the Financial Times, Fayulu received a total of 9.3 million votes, 3 million less than CENI’s announced figure, Tshisekedi came in second place with 3 million votes, showing 4.1 million votes less than what was previously announced, while Shadary comes in last with 2.9 million votes, 1.5 million votes less than the electoral body reported.

This comes at the time where talks about an alliance between the outgoing President Joseph Kabila and CENI winner Tshisekedi seem to be making rounds, resulting in allegations that the deal was made to keep Kabila in power in a way by having Tshisekedi take the mantle of leadership.

Kabila had previously thrown his weight behind Emmanuel Shadary for presidency, but allegedly made a side deal with Tshisekedi, following the realisation that Shadary was a weak candidate in terms of securing votes.

This analysis also supports claims made by Fayulu at the announcement of the results a week ago.

With the Congolese Constitutional Court set to give the final verdict soon, Fayulu has called for the cancellation of the election, which he referred to as an “electoral coup.”