{"id":103777,"date":"2023-03-21T16:56:19","date_gmt":"2023-03-21T15:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/?p=103777"},"modified":"2023-03-21T16:56:19","modified_gmt":"2023-03-21T15:56:19","slug":"inec-denies-distorting-abia-election-result-says-report-fake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/news\/inec-denies-distorting-abia-election-result-says-report-fake\/","title":{"rendered":"INEC denies distorting Abia election result, says report fake"},"content":{"rendered":"<div dir=\"auto\">The Independent National Electoral Commission INEC has denounced an online report accusing its Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu of attempts to violate its guidelines and consequently distort the Governorship election result in Abia State.<\/p>\n<p>Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Mr Rotimi Oyekanmi said the only communication sent to the State Returning Officer was the commission\u2019s directive suspending further collation of results.<\/p>\n<p>He said; \u201cThe 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\u2019s 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\u2019s letter be forwarded immediately to the Resident Electoral Commissioner of Enugu State and the Administrative Secretary of Abia State.<\/p><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">\n\u201cThe Returning Officer for Abia State then directed that the contents of the letter 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn fact, the content of the letter is basically the same as the Commission\u2019s Press Release dated Monday 20th March 2023 which has since been uploaded to the Commission\u2019s social media platforms and is already in the public domain.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe public should disregard the story as fake news\u201d, said Oyekanmi.<\/p>\n<p>A portal, Strenuous Blog, had quoted the Returning Officer as alleging that she was being forced to do the wrong thing.<\/p>\n<p>According to the portal; \u201cThe INEC Presiding Officer In Abia State Nnenna Oti had this to say\u2026\u2019I\u2019m Professor Nnenna Oti from Afikpo. I am the Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology Owerri, The people\u2019s mandate shall stand. I have spent all my adult life in pursuit of the ideals of good governance. We shall stand by the 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!\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt that point, she asked the Administrative Secretary to read the message she said that came from the INEC headquarters Abuja\u201d.<\/p><\/div>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Related Posts generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Independent National Electoral Commission INEC has denounced an online report accusing its Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu of attempts to violate its guidelines and consequently distort the Governorship election result&hellip;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Related Posts generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":103778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.8 - 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