Governor Fintiri under fire for announcing results, as Obaseki defends visit to INEC

Adamawa State Governor Ahmadu Fintiri has come under criticism for announcing results of the Edo Governorship Election, just as his Edo State counterpart, Godwin Obaseki has defended his visit to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) office in Benin.

Fintiri had reeled out results of some polling units and local governments, in contravention of the Electoral Act, which grants the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) the sole authority to announce election results.

But defending his actions, the governor, stated that the results were those already in the public domain, adding that he was not violating the law..

“I did not announce results. I only informed the public on the exact figure from our collation agents that was ongoing before INEC disrupted the process.

“INEC should be accused of violating the Electoral Act, not me”, Fintiri stated.

However, Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki has also defended his visit to the office of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Benin.

Obaseki visited the INEC office ‘at around 2 a.m,’ The Cable information. The governor was there for about 3 hours and left after members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) protested his presence.

Briefing journalists, the governor said, he was at the office for information on why the collation of election results was stopped.

Obaseki stated: “At about 1am, I got a report that collation was supposed to have been moved to the INEC head office. I also got reports from our agents that PDP agents were not allowed into the collation centre.

“At that point in time, I called the REC to find explanation as to what was going on. There was no response. I went to INEC to meet with the REC to try and understand what steps the INEC was taking to continue the process of collation.

“When I got in there at about 2am, I did not see any collation taking place and the REC refused to come out to explain what the situation was.

“Subsequently, the DIG police, Frank Mba came in and had a meeting with me where I explained that if INEC was postponing or stopping the collation process, as part of the rule, they should inform the public and citizens on what was next.

“At about 3am, there was no information from INEC as to what was going on and what was going to happen next.

“It was after my meeting with Mr. Frank Mba that INEC released a statement at about 5am this morning informing the public that collation process will start at 10am.

“My going there was to obtain information from INEC because they had refused to put any information in the public domain as to what was going on.”