Reuters said it pieced the information
together from the text message, events on the ground during the announcement of
the results and interviews with pro-democracy advocates and diplomats
in Abuja.
It added that when the independent voting monitor
sent the SMS, he hoped the outside world would hear of the plot and the text of
the message.
“Fellow countrymen, Nigeria on Trial,” read the
SMS sent on the morning of March 31 to the head of the Situation Room, an
Abuja-based coalition of human rights groups and pro-democracy advocates
monitoring the elections.
“Plans are on storm [sic] the podium at the ICC
Collation Centre and disrupt the process. Nobody is sue [sic] what will happen.
Please share this as widely as possible,” the text read further.
At that moment, Jega was about to preside over
the announcement of the results.
As tallies from around the country showed that
the All Progressives Congress candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, was leading,
“unidentified PDP(Peoples Democratic Party) hard-liners started to panic,
seeking ways of manipulating the count,” the boss of the Situation Room and the
diplomat said, citing political contacts in the Niger Delta and Abuja.
Realising they could not engineer an outright
win, the PDP agents set about doctoring the tally at collation
centres in pro-(Goodluck) Jonathan areas to ensure Buhari failed to meet a
requirement for 25 per cent support in two-thirds of the states, the head of
the Situation Room said, citing reports from election monitors on the ground.
Reuters said its reporter witnessed and
photographed one tally list in Port Harcourt, Rivers State with suspiciously
similar totals for registered voters at polling stations: 500, 500, 500, 500,
500, 500, 500, 500, 450.
In another tally centre in the city, 17,594 valid
votes were recorded out of a registered voter population of 11,757, the Reuters
reporter said.
Foreign election observers also noted the
peculiarities – and contacted diplomats in Abuja, who called for international
intervention.
The United States Secretary of State, John Kerry,
and his British counterpart, Philip Hammond, who were in Switzerland for talks
on Iran – issued a tough statement, saying vote counting “may be subject to
deliberate political interference.”
But as Buhari’s lead grew, some PDP supporters
from the Niger Delta, including Orubebe, decided on a final gamble: to create a
disturbance in the main INEC hall and have “thugs snatch Jega from the stage, Reuters
quoted the Head of the Situation Room and the Abuja-based diplomat.
What the group planned to do after the abduction
was unclear, they said.
“It was a desperate thing, mostly by a group of
people from the Niger Delta, who were in the room,” the Situation Room head
said, describing events that unfolded publicly in the minutes after he received
the SMS.
When Jega opened proceedings on the morning of
March 31, Orubebe had grabbed a microphone and launched into an 11-minute
tirade, accusing Jega of bias.
“Mr. chairman, we have lost confidence in you,”
he shouted, pushing away officials, trying to make him surrender the
microphone. “You are being very, very selective. You are partial,” he
continued, surrounded by three or four supporters. “You are tribalistic. We
cannot take it.”
At this point, according to the Head of the
Situation Room and the diplomat, Jega’s security details were approached by
unidentified individuals, telling them to stand down but they declined.
“Some of the guards, who had been guarding Jega
for years, demanded a written order,” the Head of the Situation Room said.
Jega later rebuked Orubebe, saying, “Let us not
disrupt a process that has ended peacefully,” he said as Orubebe slumped in his
chair.
“Mr. Orubebe, you are a former minister of the
Federal Republic. You are a statesman in your own right. You should be careful
about what you say or about what allegations you make.”
Orubebe later congratulated Buhari on Twitter,
expressing his “apologies to fellow Nigerians.”
The ex-minister did not respond to requests by
the news agency for comment on the details of the plot.
INEC, said the news agency, also declined to
comment and turned down requests for an interview with Jega,
Reuters however said it found no
evidence to suggest that Jonathan, who accepted defeat in the election, was
involved in the plot.
The Chief Press Secretary to the chairman of the
commission, Kayode Idowu, told our correspondent that he was not aware of the
alleged plot to kidnap Jega.
Idowu said, “I think somebody is imagining here.
The chairman was not aware of any such plan; he didn’t conduct any
investigation to know that. He was not under such threat during or after the
announcement.’’
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