The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has clarified some issues surrounding the controversies over the governorship election in Abia State.
One of the issues was that the Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu had called the Returning Officer, Professor Nnenna Oti to give her directives on guidelines to follow in ensuring that Abia governorship election results were collated based on some certain criteria.
However, in a statement by INEC Chief Press Secretary, Rotimi Oyekanmi,the Commission said its chairman never called the REC.
Rather, INEC said that it was the Returning Officer that called the Chairman when she wanted the official communication on the Commission’s decision to suspend the collation of results in the 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.
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“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,” the Commission said.