A former head of state, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, said on Friday the National Peace Committee (NPC) was pushed to persuade the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to cancel the 2023 presidential election.
Abubakar, who is the chairman of the NPC, stated this during the presentation of the committee’s report on the elections.
The ex-military rule said the committee came under huge pressure from certain individuals and groups to influence the process.
The INEC also on Friday dismissed claims of discrepancies in the results of the election posted on its website and those presented by returning officers at the National Collation Centre in Abuja.
The commission made the clarification in a letter dated August 15 and addressed to the Centre for Collaborative Investigative Journalism (CCIJ).
CCIJ had in a recent report said it found some discrepancies in the election results announced by INEC and the uploaded results to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV).
The NPC and INEC’s positions brought to the fore the intrigues associated with the election.
More than 18 months after the elections were concluded, Nigerians have continued to pick holes in the conduct of the exercise and results announced by the commission.
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The report read: “As the election day progressed, criticisms and counter-criticisms became abundant. The NPC was already being faced with a flurry of phone calls and the need to call INEC to order. The Peace Committee was flooded with requests for intervention.
“Both the Chairman of the Committee, Gen. Abdulsalami A. Abubakar, the Convener, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, and the Head of NPC Secretariat, Fr. Atta Barkindo, were inundated with calls, requests, and petitions demanding the intervention of the NPC.
“Some of the requests wanted the NPC to prevail on INEC to stop collating election results because there were gross violations and lack of compliance with the electoral act.
“Others demanded that the tenets of the Peace Accord signed were not adhered to and therefore the Committee should call for cancellation of the election entirely.
“The most significant call was related to the 25% threshold for Abuja as the Federal Capital Territory. Some of the analysts who reached out to the committee asked that the final election result should not be announced because the presumptive president-elect did not score the required 25% as stated in the Electoral Act. If anything, there should be a runoff.”
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