JANAR VS INEC

[Dan-Borno]

The Sunnews Online Edition

The presidential candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), General Mohammadu Buhari Wednesday formally reacted to the allegation by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that the results he tendered at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal were forged, saying he has been scandalized by the accusation, designed by the electoral body to confuse the Justices of the tribunal.

The former Head of State in a statement issued by his campaign organization in Abuja demanded an unreserved public apology from the Commission for disparaging him, failing which he would take necessary legal option to seek redress.

However, the INEC insisted Wednesday, that its results were indeed forged but denied that it accused the presidential candidate of being behind the forgery. "We never at any time claimed Gen. Buhari forged our documents, we couldn't have said so. We hold him in high esteem, but the fact still remains that our results in 12 states tendered before the tribunal were forged, and we will pursue this to a logical conclusion", said Philip Umeadi, INEC Federal Commissioner in charge of publicity.

Demanding an apology for the alleged offensive allegation, General Buhari in the statement signed by Osita Okechukwu, the Publicity Secretary of the campaign organisation, said he was embarrassed at the allegation describing it as "a desperate antic and orchestra of deception designed by INEC to deceive the Honourable Justices, unsuspecting public, cause confusion and deny us victory."

The campaign organization had quoted the allegation credited to Barrister Umeadi as saying, "we have since discovered that from the duplicates and triplicates in our custody, the dates affixed on the documents we inadvertently certified had been mutilated and changed and it is our intention to pursue this matter to its logical conclusions legally".

Gen. Buhari's camp, however, said: "We of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), Presidential Campaign Organization, wish to condemn in its entirety, the false allegation from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that we forged documents tendered at the Presidential Elections Petitions Tribunal.

"For the avoidance of doubt, we did not mutilate nor change any document. We wish to state that INEC at the inception of the Tribunal was hostile, non-cooperative and not only evaded court service but frustrated our efforts.

"It is also worthy of note that when INEC finally agreed to obey the court order by allowing us to inspect its document; INEC officials, mainly lawyers guided our inspectors at every angle.
"Secondly, we made all the photocopies of INEC documents in the presence of INEC officials. Although we paid for every copy made, INEC officials were the custodians of all documents throughout the exercise and until delivered to our lawyers in September, and October 2007, had conveyed the documents from point A to B.

"As a result, what could have been completed in a record time of two weeks, took months and we waited patiently until INEC officials duly certified the documents. Consequently, we are at a loss as to when and how we mutilated and changed the documents; for this contraption, we ask the following questions:

"Did we forge the Chairman of INEC, Professor Maurice Iwu's or any other INEC official's signature? Did we duplicate copies of result sheets or any other document?, Did we affix, predate or undate any document?, Did we delete or create blank spaces on voters registers?, Did we forge documents to wipe out polling agents signatures?, Did we add or subtract figures for INEC? Did we create the yawning gap between result sheets from the units and the center? Did we engineer INEC's extreme ineptitude and scant regard for due process?

"Finally, we demand as a matter of urgent national importance, unreserved public apology from INEC, for mischievously misinforming the Honourable Justices, the unsuspecting public and cruelly tarnishing the image of our presidential candidate, and lead counsel, whose unique selling point is integrity and transparency."

Barrister Umeadi explained that neither him nor INEC had ever disparaged Gen. Buhari by way of allegation saying what the Commission had said and is saying is that the results tendered at the tribunal did not originate from its office because they were different from the duplicates and originals in its custody.

He stated that the original or otherwise of the various results would be determined by the tribunal and the authors and not for the Commission to allege anyone. "INEC did a thorough job in the computation of the results and whatever discrepancies we noticed will be brought to the attention of the courts," he
concluded.
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Ga irin ta nan, those of us advocating that Janar should let go this
case are fully aware of how things go in this our country which all
of us also know.  Once you are in power, there are 1001 ways to
hang whoever you desire to hang.

Imagine, the Janar is now not talking about election tribunal but
INEC accusing him of forging documents belonging to the Federal
Government.  Though INEC is denying mentioning the name of the
Janar, however from the statement below it is clear their aim is
at the innocent Janar:

However, the INEC insisted Wednesday, that its results were indeed forged but denied that it accused the presidential candidate of being behind the forgery. "We never at any time claimed Gen. Buhari forged our documents, we couldn't have said so. We hold him in high esteem, but the fact still remains that our results in 12 states tendered before the tribunal were forged, and we will pursue this to a logical conclusion", said Philip Umeadi, INEC Federal Commissioner in charge of publicity.

So many things are expected to follow immediately just to portray
the Janar in a bad light, and a little of it is an accusation for forgery.