INEC chairman denies calling Abia Presiding Officer on collation of results

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has dismissed as fake the news making the rounds that its Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu called the Presiding Officer for the Governorship election in Abia state directing her to subvert the will of the people.

In a statement titled “distortion of facts about the Abia State Governorship Election”, Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Rotimi Oyekanmi described the information as fake and asked Nigerians to disregard it.

The Presiding officer was quoted by a blogger as saying “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!”

She was also said to have claimed 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.

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She was also said to have asked the Administrative Secretary in the state to read the message she said came from the INEC headquarters Abuja.

However, Oyekanmi in a statement on Tuesday said ‘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 results 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.”