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 that 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 in 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,” he said.
Orubebe later congratulated Buhari on
Twitter, expressing his “apologies to
fellow Nigerians.”
Orubebe 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.’’
