Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Attahiru Jega, has attributed the decision to accept the controversial presidential and National Assembly elections results from Rivers State on the report and recommendations of the three-man fact-finding delegation to the state, insisting that the allegations contained in the petition of the All Progressives Congress (APC) were not strong enough to cancel the elections.
The party’s agent, Dr. Akinba Mohammed, had raised objection to the presentation of the results from the state until the INEC chairman told Nigerians the outcome of the findings from the committee sent to the state.
Replying, the INEC chairman explained: “A day after the elections and before we commenced the collation of the results, I received a protest from the APC demanding for the cancelation of the elections in Rivers state and rescheduling of the elections.
“I circulated the memo to the members of the electoral commission and we had a meeting on Monday morning before the commencement of the collation to review the petition and thought it required to be investigated. We set up a three-man committee headed by the National Commissioner in charge of that unit. They went to Port Harcourt, Rivers State on Monday and returned on Tuesday morning before we commenced the collation of the result on Tuesday.”
They presented their observations and findings to the Commission.
“There were a number of points adduced as to why the Commission should cancel that election and reschedule it. The first one which was major was that elections did not take place in Rivers State. The second was that the result sheets were either not distributed or photocopies of the result sheets were used. There were other allegations such as substitutions of trained staff among others.
“Due to limited time, we paid attention to verifying those very strong allegations which can actually affect the integrity of the elections particularly the issue of elections not holding and we have established that elections were held in Rivers state. However, just as in many other states where elections did not hold in one or two places because of the reasons we listened to, it was the same with Rivers.
“We could not also establish any cancelations or substitutions of our adhoc staff and the explanation given to us are satisfactory.
We generated the list of electoral officers from our head office and sent them to the states to pick the collation officers from the list but we know that on election days, there is every likelihood that somebody in that list may not participate in that election.
“We allowed Resident Electoral Commissioners to find replacement from the pool if such situation occurs. From the information available to us, there is no reason to believe that there was substitution of our staff. We do not believe that there were issues substandard enough to require the cancellation of the result in Rivers State and rescheduling of the election and that was what was responsible for the late commencement of the collation today
