![\"Prof](\"http:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Prof-Ibeawuchi.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nINEC Returning Officer Narrates How He Was Forced To Announce Okorocha As Winner Of Senatorial Election In Imo.<\/p>\n
A drama which ensued on Sunday night has metamorphosis into a full-blown controversy on Monday morning when Innocent Ibeawuchi, the returning officer for Imo West Senatorial District, said he was \u201cdetained at the centre for days.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said this while announcing the results of the senatorial election for the zone.<\/p>\n
Before reeling out figures at the district collation centre in the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) Office in Orlu, Mr Ibeawuchi, a professor, said he was being held \u201cunder duress\u201d to announce the results.<\/p>\n
Leadership Newspaper \u201cMy name is Ibeawuchi Izuchukwu Innocent, a professor at the Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO), the returning officer for Imo West (Orlu) senatorial zone\u201d, the official said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy area commander; my P.Os; the party agents here present; members of the press; ladies and gentlemen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been held hostage here for days so I\u2019m trying to ease off and take my life home back to my children and for the sake of that I am calling these results under duress,\u201d the returning officer said.<\/p>\n
He then reeled out the results.<\/p>\n
The Drama<\/p>\n
After announcing nine out of 12 local government areas that made up the zone, Mr Ibeawuchi paused. The time was 9:45 pm Sunday.<\/p>\n
Three LGA results were being awaited to finalize results for Imo west district. They are Oru West, Oguta and Orlu.<\/p>\n
Mr Ibeawuchi said he received an urgent call from the state\u2019s Resident Electoral Commission (REC), Francis Ezeonu, to return to Owerri and continue the process Monday morning after they noticed that the entire result was manipulated.<\/p>\n
But Mr Okorocha\u2019s supporters insisted the returning officer \u201cmust complete\u201d the announcement, \u201cotherwise, he is not going anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
They blocked the professor from leaving the building. They refused to yield even when police officers intervened.<\/p>\n
For hours, the APC agents who initially hauled verbal threats at the returning officer resorted to pleading. But Mr Ibeawuchi stuck to his guns.<\/p>\n
Mr Ibeawuchi would later yield and declared Mr Okorocha winner of the election.<\/p>\n
What happened?<\/p>\n
It was not immediately clear why Mr Ibeawuchi initially refused to announce the remaining results on Sunday night but later did on Monday \u201cunder duress.\u201d<\/p>\n
When contacted, INEC spokesperson in the state, Emmanuella Opara, said the commission was following the development and had sent security personnel to bring Mr Ibeawuchi to Owerri.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet him come back here with his report and tell us what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Onyeriri, who is a sitting member of the House of Representatives, later alleged that the returning officer was held hostage throughout the night by Mr Okorocha\u2019s supporters after a directive from the REC to \u201cstop the collation and return to Owerri.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said Mr Ibeawuchi stopped the process after observing \u201cthe whole results were rigged and inflated in favour\u201d of the outgoing governor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThroughout the night, they used several means to compel the returning officer to go ahead with the wrong results.\u201d<\/p>\n
He further described elections in the zone as heavily rigged by Mr Okorocha, saying he would not accept the results.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Ideeato South, he brought all collation officers to his house and compelled them to write results on his behalf. The number turned out was far behind the number captured by smartcard reader.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe also colluded with some RAC techs to make the smart card readers not to work to enable him to do normal registration, hence inflation of voters.<\/p>\n
The election was adjudged by observers and participants to be fraught with irregularities such as ballot snatching, invasion of polling units and harassment of voters by thugs.<\/p>\n
Shortly before the governor\u2019s arrival, Premium Times reported how a journalist, duly accredited to cover the polls, was harassed and briefly detained by the thugs in Mr Okorocha\u2019s polling unit at about 10:14 am.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
INEC Returning Officer Narrates How He Was Forced To Announce Okorocha As Winner Of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-frontpage"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":"","elegant-magazine-featured":"","elegant-magazine-medium":"","elegant-magazine-medium-small":"","elegant-magazine-thumbnail-small":""},"author_info":{"info":["Imo Trumpeta"]},"category_info":"Frontpage<\/a>","tag_info":"Frontpage","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23651"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23663,"href":"https:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23651\/revisions\/23663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}