The Abia State governor, Okezie Ikpeazu, said he reported the returning officer of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in the March 18 governorship election in the state, Nnenna Oti, to the commission before the election after making a background check on her relationship with one of the contenders.
Recall that the candidate of the Labour Party, Alex Otti, was declared the winner at the polls defeating the incumbent People’s Democratic Party.
Mrs Oti, who is the vice chancellor of the Federal University of Owerri, alleged that she was threatened and pressured to manipulate the election results, but she stood her ground.
But the governor, while speaking on Channels TV current affairs programme Politics Today on Thursday, described her comment as very unfortunate, saying she lacks the power to manipulate results.
“This is very unfortunate. I have not met that professor, and I am shocked because in the first place, if she is a professor, she doesn’t even have the capacity to manipulate results because these are results that emanated from the units, collated at the wards, collated at the local governments, and brought for her to just add them up and announce. I’ve not met her before; I’ve not spoken to her. If I have met her, if I have spoken to her, let her come to the public and declare so. So, I am shocked that she is making a big noise out of nothing,” the governor said.
“At some point, when I saw the coincidence in name and traced a little bit of her background, I complained to INEC that this lady was not going to be fair but they assured me that they had profiled her. I am still shocked. What she has portrayed in the aftermath of her service or stewardship in Abia indicates the fact that she is visibly happy with what she did. Her level of bias in that regard could be placed in favour of a party. She has portrayed that she had something at the back of her mind before she came.”
