Fresh facts have emerged on the March 31
attempt by a former Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Elder Godsday
Orubebe, to scuttle
the announcement of the March 28 presidential
election results.
The main part of Orubebe’s action, according to Reuters on
Thursday, was a plot to use hired thugs to kidnap the Chairman of the
Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, and
consequently stall the electoral process.
The news agency quoted unnamed
pro-democracy advocates and a Nigeria-based diplomat as saying that one
of Jega’s aides unearthed the plot.
It said the aide had sent a text message
to an independent voting monitor, “warning of an imminent threat to the
electoral process.”
Reuters said it pieced the
information together from the text message, events on the ground during
the announcement of the results and interviews with pro-democracy
advocates and diplomats in Abuja.
It added that when the independent
voting monitor sent the SMS, he hoped the outside world would hear of
the plot and the text of the message.
“Fellow countrymen, Nigeria on Trial,”
read the SMS sent on the morning of March 31 to the head of the
Situation Room, an Abuja-based coalition of human rights groups and
pro-democracy advocates monitoring the elections.
“Plans are on storm [sic] the podium at
the ICC Collation Centre and disrupt the process. Nobody is sue [sic]
what will happen. Please share this as widely as possible,” the text
read further.
At that moment, Jega was about to preside over the announcement of the results.
As tallies from around the country
showed that the All Progressives Congress candidate, Muhammadu Buhari,
was leading, “unidentified PDP(Peoples Democratic Party) hard-liners
started to panic, seeking ways of manipulating the count,” the boss of
the Situation Room and the diplomat said, citing political contacts in
the Niger Delta and Abuja.
Realising they could not engineer an
outright win, the PDP agents set about doctoring the tally at
collation centres in pro-(Goodluck) Jonathan areas to ensure Buhari
failed to meet a requirement for 25 per cent support in two-thirds of
the states, the head of the Situation Room said, citing reports from
election monitors on the ground.
Reuters said its reporter
witnessed and photographed one tally list in Port Harcourt, Rivers State
with suspiciously similar totals for registered voters at polling
stations: 500, 500, 500, 500, 500, 500, 500, 500, 450.
In another tally centre in the city, 17,594 valid votes were recorded out of a registered voter population of 11,757, the Reuters reporter said.
Foreign election observers also noted
the peculiarities – and contacted diplomats in Abuja, who called for
international intervention.
The United States Secretary of State,
John Kerry, and his British counterpart, Philip Hammond, who were in
Switzerland for talks on Iran – issued a tough statement, saying vote
counting “may be subject to deliberate political interference.”
But as Buhari’s lead grew, some PDP
supporters from the Niger Delta, including Orubebe, decided on a final
gamble: to create a disturbance in the main INEC hall and have “thugs
snatch Jega from the stage, Reuters quoted the Head of the Situation Room and the Abuja-based diplomat.
What the group planned to do after the abduction was unclear, they said.
“It was a desperate thing, mostly by a
group of people from the Niger Delta, who were in the room,” the
Situation Room head said, describing events that unfolded publicly in
the minutes after he received the SMS.
When Jega opened proceedings on the
morning of March 31, Orubebe had grabbed a microphone and launched into
an 11-minute tirade, accusing Jega of bias.
“Mr. chairman, we have lost confidence
in you,” he shouted, pushing away officials, trying to make him
surrender the microphone. “You are being very, very selective. You are
partial,” he continued, surrounded by three or four supporters. “You are
tribalistic. We cannot take it.”
At this point, according to the Head of
the Situation Room and the diplomat, Jega’s security details were
approached by unidentified individuals, telling them to stand down but
they declined.
“Some of the guards, who had been guarding Jega for years, demanded a written order,” the Head of the Situation Room said.
Jega later rebuked Orubebe, saying, “Let
us not disrupt a process that has ended peacefully,” he said as Orubebe
slumped in his chair.
“Mr. Orubebe, you are a former minister
of the Federal Republic. You are a statesman in your own right. You
should be careful about what you say or about what allegations you
make.”
Orubebe later congratulated Buhari on Twitter, expressing his “apologies to fellow Nigerians.”
The ex-minister did not respond to requests by the news agency for comment on the details of the plot.
INEC, said the news agency, also declined to comment and turned down requests for an interview with Jega,
Reuters however said it found no evidence to suggest that Jonathan, who accepted defeat in the election, was involved in the plot.
The Chief Press Secretary to the
chairman of the commission, Kayode Idowu, told our correspondent that he
was not aware of the alleged plot to kidnap Jega.
Idowu said, “I think somebody is
imagining here. The chairman was not aware of any such plan; he didn’t
conduct any investigation to know that. He was not under such threat
during or after the announcement.’’
Source:Punch Newspaper.
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