There is pandemonium in Ado-Ekiti at the collation center of the final results as opposing parties held up the final announcement of figures in the Ekiti State re-run elections. Trouble started when the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Mrs. Ayoka Adebayo, who had earlier been holed up in her car for 3 hours began announcing the election results which accepted final figures of the disputed Ido-Osi local government figures that gave the PDP a wide margin of victory.
Mrs. Ayoka Adebayo who resigned her commission based on the Ido-Osi figures was not allowed to conclude the announcement before hell broke loose at the venue.
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OUR STORY: Ahead of “Titanic Tuesday”, Ekiti Resident Electoral Commissioner swamped with State Surveillance
Sunday, 03 May 2009 20:08 Sahara Reporters, New York
The Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) of Ekiti State might not have bargained for her present circumstance by agreeing to return to Ekiti State to conclude the re-run elections in the State, now re-scheduled for next Tuesday.
Saharareporters gathered from sources in Abuja that Mrs. Adebayo walked into a trap by accepting to withdraw her resignation letter. The office of Nigeria's presidency has detailed a myriad of security agents to closely scrutinize all her actions and transactions before and after the elections. All her telephone calls are being screened by a combined team of police and state security officials. Mrs, Adebayo is also being gagged from speaking to the media until the elections are done with on Tuesday. Curiously, one of her most vociferous aides has also been removed from speaking on her behalf.
A battery of security agents now guards at her house in Abeokuta, Abuja and she was to be accompanied to Ekiti this (Sunday) evening by a convoy of security cars and personnel to begin preparation for Tuesday in an election that our sources were already decided for PDP’s candidate Segun Oni, if the security cordon put around Mrs. Adebayo achieves its intended purpose. Our sources in Ado-Ekiti said Mrs. Adebayo did not arrive to the state capital tonight as expected.
Sources told Saharareporters that INEC chairman Maurice Iwu, working with Yar'adua, will seriously surprise Mrs. Adebayo at the conclusion of Ekiti's re-run election at a pace faster than she can cope with. Our sources said Mrs. Adebayo's decision to go back to Ekiti was due in part to her compromise not to have to face security agents to explain some allegations in her resignation letter which were interpreted by the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) to as threat to "the corporate existence of Nigeria". That point that was also alluded to later by the Minister of Information, in her joint press conference with the Inspector General of Police.
Thus, faced with the imminence of a rigorous trial for treason and other offences, which elements of bribery and corruption, as laid out by the spokesperson of the People's Democratic Party and the Minister of Information, Dora Akunyili, Mrs. Adebayo chose to withdraw her resignation letter. A source told Saharareporters that investigations are being conducted to determine those behind her "letter of resignation".
The federal government may have achieved victory as a result, since Maurice Iwu -led INEC successfully declared, last night, that results brought in from the nine local governments of the State were valid except those of the two wards to be conducted on Tuesday. This contravenes Iwu's earlier admission that only the REC can declare the results of the elections held in Ekiti State.
Analysts point out that INEC's press release on the matter did carefully avoid carrying any signatures. But the Commission sent out results of all the 61 wards so far conducted to the media. Those results, including those of Ido-Osi local government, clearly give the PDP a 14,000-vote advantage. Mrs. Adebayo was not allowed a say as to the new date of the election in Oye-Ekiti or the rights to spell out the real results, but members of her immediate family assured Saharareporters at the weekend of their confidence that she will still act according to her conscience.
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