Prof. Nnenna Oti, the Returning Officer for the Abia State Governorship Election, has opened up on how she was offered bribe and subjected to severe pressure to rig the  just concluded Abia State Elections.

Oti, who is the Vice Chancellor of Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO), spoke when she was given a heroine’s welcome by the staff and students of FUTO, located in Owerri, Imo State capital.

At the welcome ceremony, Prof Oti said when duty called, I resolved that “If I perish, I perish. They came with their threats, they came with their money, they came with their intimidation,” she confirmed.

She also said that in spite of the threats, she “stood on her ideals and principles not to short-change anyone.”

She added: “I didn’t start today; I stand here before God, Jesus Christ. I have never defrauded anyone, all I did was to declare the riot act as follows: Under me, votes must count. Under me, the people’s mandate will be upheld because I, Professor Nnnena Oti, can never do evil,” she said.

It would be recalled that INEC had suspended collation of the election results in Abia State after heavily armed thugs invaded one of INEC offices in the state.

What followed were confusion, fear and intense controversy.

At a point, the Returning Officer, Prof Oti and some other key electoral officials were summoned to Abuja over the controversy.

 At last Prof Oti’s team were allowed to declare the results, discounting the threats.

According to the results finally announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) head office in Abia State, Dr Alex Otti of Labour Party polled 175,467 votes to defeat Okey Ahiwe of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who got 88,529 votes.

Since the declaration of Abia State’s Governorship Election results, Prof Nnenna Oti, the Abia State’s INEC Returning Officer, who rejected bribes and snubbed threats to make the people’s votes count, has been widely celebrated in and outside Abia State and Nigeria.

Photo Credit: The Source Magazine