We Announced Alkaleri LGA Results Under Violent Threats

There was uproar at the Prof. Mahmood Yakubu Conference Hall, at the INEC Headquarters, Bauchi, venue of the collation of results of Tafawa Balewa Local Government Area on Sunday evening.

Confusion started when the State Returning Officer of the governorship election, Prof. Kyari Mohammed, called the Collation Officer of Alkaleri LGA to step forward and announce the results alongside him.

Immediately, an agent of the PPC, Col. Umar Tilde, raised an observation that there was no collation in Alkaleri Local Government Area.

The Returning Officer then asked the Collation Officer, Dominion Anosike, to explain what happened and she shocked the gathering when she said that she announced the results under duress.

She said there was violence at the Local Government Collation Centre and election materials were carted away; adding, “Police had to rescue us because our lives were at stake.”

“We started collation of the results at 11pm on Saturday and after collating results of six wards, some hoodlums stormed the area around 6am and insisted that we must announce the candidate of a particular party as the winner.

“I had to announce the results under duress because they insisted that we must announce it.

“Since the results were carted away, I had to announce the result we had in a laptop after comparing it with the results of the agents at the centre,” Anosike alleged.

Anosike further explained that with the kind of violence there and the pressure, she had to announce it like that.

She insisted that the final results she wanted to announce was genuine but this further threw the Collation Center into an uproar.

Tilde, again stood up and insisted that: “the result she announced there was given to her from a laptop. We will not accept it.”

The Returning Officer, Prof. Kyari, then intervened and said that since Anosike said the results were genuine, having been brought from the polling units to the Ward and the Local Government Collation Centre, he will give a final verdict later.

He called the Collation Officer of another Local Government to step forward and announce his results.

After that, the session went for a 45 minutes’ break for the problem to be sorted out.