INEC chairman denies calling Abia State Returning Officer to compromise governorship election result

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Tuesday described as fake news, reports that its chairman, Professor Mahmud Yakubu called the Abia State Returning Officer during the now suspended collation of results and gave her certain directives to compromise the integrity of the election.

Reports had emerged in several blogs with what they said were statements by the INEC Presiding Officer in Abia State, Prof. Nnenna Oti, in which she reportedly vowed not to allow the election to be manipulated and that the ‘peoples mandate’ would be respected.

The Returning Officer was quoted to have said: “I’m Professor Nnenna Oti from Afikpo. I am the Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology Owerri, the people’s mandate shall stand.

“I have spent all my adult life in pursuit of the ideals of good governance. We shall stand by these principles. The pastor in me (she is a Pastor with the RCCG) and the mother in me will not permit me to do anything that will adversely affect the future of our children. I shall do right by God and by man!

“Then to the shock and surprise of everyone in the hall, she said that the INEC Chairman Mahmood Yakubu, personally called her and gave her directives on guidelines to follow in ensuring that Abia governorship election results were collated based on some criteria but that on her own she has decided that the will of Abia voters would not be subverted under her watch.”At that point, she asked the Administrative Secretary to read the message she said that came from the INEC headquarters Abuja.

“There are men and women of integrity in Nigeria. I’ve seen one of them.

But, reacting to the allegation, Chief Press Secretary to INEC chairman, Mr Rotimi Oyekanmi, said the report is a distortion of what happened.
The rebuttal reads: “The INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu never called the Returning Officer to give her a directive. Rather, the Returning Officer wanted the official communication on the Commission’s decision to suspend the collation of result in Abia State. The Chairman then directed that pending the delivery of the hard copies, the soft copies of the Commission’s letter be forwarded immediately to the Resident Electoral Commissioner of Enugu State and the Administrative Secretary of Abia State.

“The Returning Officer for Abia State then directed that the content of the letter should be read aloud by the Administrative Secretary in the presence of agents of political parties, observers, the media and security personnel at the Collation Centre.

“This is what is now being mischievously interpreted as a directive to the Returning Officer on some phantom criteria at variance with the approved guidelines. There is nothing like that.

“In fact, the content of the letter is basically the same as the Commission’s Press Release dated Monday 20th March 2023 which has since been uploaded to the Commission’s social media platforms and is already in the public domain.

“The public should disregard the story as fake news.”