The All Progressives Congress has alerted Nigerians and the international community to ongoing plans by the Peoples Democratic Party-led President Goodluck Jonathan Administration to tamper with the results of Saturday’s elections and circumvent the people’s will.
There have been several reports that meetings are being held at various levels to tamper with the outcome of the election.
The APC said in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed: “The information that we have received since we issued our last statement is to the effect that the Administration is holding clandestine meetings with security chiefs and others with the sole aim of altering or scuttling the results, which they consider to be highly embarrassing and unpalatable, using malleable RECs.”
Information in the public space has it that a meeting was being held at the private residence of the National Security Adviser, Colonel Sambo Dasuki (rtd), with the country’s Service Chiefs and the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Bello Adoke (SAN), in attendance.
Reports also had in that in Jigawa State, officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission were locked in a meeting with the state Governor, Alhaji Sule Lamido, at the Government House.
The agenda of these meetings, those who have made the allegation, is to be to possibly coerce the Chairman of INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega, to declare the presidential elections, which held over the weekend as inconclusive.
Though Jega at a press conference on Sunday denied the allegation, the APC in the statement by Mohammed warned that nothing but the authentic results held by the party agents and all other stakeholders will be acceptable to the party, and that whoever is planning to do otherwise should weigh its implication on the survival of the nation’s democracy.
The APC said the moves to manipulate the results are also being replicated in some of the states, including Bauchi, where everything is being done to reverse the outcome and Imo State, where many aides of Governor Rochas Okorocha are being brutalized and arrested in hordes.
The statement added: “We know they are stunned dizzy by the crushing defeat which has been inflicted on them across the nation, going by the results in the hands of our agents. We know they have activated their paid media channels to seek to confuse Nigerians by making outlandish claims that their presidential candidate is leading in the elections. We know they are counting on malleable RECs to thwart the will of the people, and we know they have no qualms about plunging the nation into crisis just because of narrow interests.
“This is why we are putting on red alert all the good people of Nigeria who trooped out in large numbers, defying the sun and the rain and against all odds, to vote for change. We are also by this statement calling on the international community to urgently prevail on the Nigerian authorities not to tamper with the results of the elections as expressed by Nigerians.
”As we have said many times, we will accept the outcome of the elections if they are free and fair. What we will not accept is the manipulated outcome of the polls.”