The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has refuted the story that stated that the Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, issued a directive different from the guidelines approved by the commission to undermine the collation of Abia governorship election results.
The Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Rotimi Oyekanmi, in a statement in Abuja on Tuesday, advised the public to disregard the story as fake news.
Oyekanmi said Yakubu never called the Returning Officer to give directions.
“However, the Returning Officer wants to officially communicate the decision of the Commission to postpone the collection of results in Abia State.
“The chairman then ordered that pending delivery of the hard copy, the soft copy of the Commission’s letter was immediately forwarded to the Enugu State Resident Electoral Commissioner and the Abia State Administrative Secretary.
“The Returning Officer for Abia State then ordered that the contents of the letter be read by the Administrative Secretary in the presence of political party agents, observers, media and security personnel at the Collation Center.
“This is now being misinterpreted as a directive to the returning officer on some phantom criteria that is different from the approved guidelines. There is no such thing,” Oyekanmi said.
Oyekanmi added, “actually the content of the letter is the same as the press release of the commission dated Monday, March 20 which has now been uploaded to the social media platform of the Commission and is in the public domain.
“The public should ignore these stories as fake news,” he said.
A portal, Strenuous Blog, quoted the country’s return officer as saying that he was forced to do something wrong.
It was reported that the Presiding Officer of INEC in Abia State, Nnenna Oti, said that Yakubu personally called him and gave him directives on the guidelines to be followed to ensure that the results of the Abia governorship election are collated based on some criteria.