Femi Fani-Kayode
Contrary to President Goodluck Jonathan’s dismissal
of the Ekiti rigging audio recording as a fabrication
that is not worth his attention, the spokesperson for
his campaign, Femi Fani-Kayode has admitted that
the tape is genuine but that the characters involved in
the meeting captured in the recording were not
discussing how to rig the 2014 governorship election
in Ekiti state.
Speaking at a press conference in Abuja, Mr. Fani-
Kayode said his team had listened to and reviewed
the recording and that it came to the conclusion that
the opposition All Progressives Congress turned fact
on its head by claiming that Governor Ayodele Fayose
of Ekiti state; former Minister of State for Defence,
Musiliu Obanikoro; and the Minister of Police Affairs,
Jelili Adesiyan, who featured in the recording,
planned how to rig the election.
“We have listened to the audio clip and we make bold
to say that the discussion that took place in it did not
make any mention of any form of rigging in the Ekiti
state governorship election and neither did it contain
any evidence of any conspiracy to rig,” he said.
Mr. Fani-Kayode also said rather than attempting to
orchestrate rigging, what the audio clip clearly
revealed was Governor Fayose expressing concerns
that a military commander was not acting on
information about illegal movement of weapons into
certain parts of the state.
“The Governor and others were apparently worried
that safety of the voters and INEC officials could be
compromised if security measures were not strictly
enforced,” he said.
Mr Fani-Kayode’s admission of the authenticity of the
tape is another chapter in the series of contradictory
responses from the ruling party and those at the
centre of the vote rigging plot.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, last
Friday, Mr. Jonathan said he would not investigate
the authenticity of the audio recording because it was
a “fabrication.”
“It’s all fabrications. Why should I investigate things
that are not real?” he asked.
Using forensic analysis that compared the voices in
the recording with public record samples of the
individuals in the recording, Guardian Consulting,
The New York-based security firm, that helped
authenticate the recordings, confirmed that the tape
was genuine.
“The voices from the recording were subjected to a
Forensic Voice Frequency Comparison against known
samples and were found to match to a 98 per cent
degree of certainty,” the firm said.
Mr Jonathan’s dismissal of the tape as a fabrication
came after Mr Obanikoro denied taking part in the
meeting and threatened to sue PREMIUM TIMES and
Sahara Reporters for their vigorous reporting on the
matter.
Mr. Adesiyan confessed that the recording was
genuine but that it was more of an altercation
between Mr. Fayose and Mr. Momoh after the former
accused the later of favouring the then governor of
the state, Kayode Fayemi.
“Fayose accused the General who supervised the Ekiti
election of taking bribe from Fayemi and APC, that
was two days before the election. They called me
because they said the General disarmed policemen
and I told him to allow the policemen to do their job,”
he told the Sunday Punch newspaper.
After initially claiming his voice was manipulated
using speech software such as Natural Voices, Mr.
Fayose later admitted during a political event in Ekiti
that it was his voice that was captured in the tape but
claimed he was rebuking Mr. Momoh for favouring
the APC.
“If you listen to the tape about military rigging in Ekiti.
Listen to the tape you will see that I was the one
accusing the army of compromise. Listen, take time
to listen. But they would come back with propaganda
and saying it all as if the whole world of propaganda
belongs to them,” he said.
Counter Allegation
While challenging the APC to do a critical content
analysis of the discussions in the audio clip, Mr. Fani-
Kayode said it was the APC that rigged the
governorship election in Osun state.
“During the course of those elections, some of their
agents gathered in secret locations where they
thumb-printed ballot papers in favor of their
governorship candidate, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola,” he
said.
Mr. Fani Kayode also played a video tape he claimed
proved the APC rigged the election in Osun state.
“It is ironic that instead of purging itself of its own
insatiable appetite for rigging and cheating, the APC,
through its Presidential candidate, General
Muhammadu Buhari, chose to call a press
conference in which he alleged that our leaders were
ordering soldiers to rig in Ekiti state.
“This is a clear case of the pot calling the kettle
black,” he said.
APC, Buhari calling for violence At his press
conference, Mr. Fani-Kayode also accused the APC
and its presidential candidate of veiled attempts to
instigate violence in the country, while also
undermining the nation’s armed forces.
“It is now very clear to us that the APC is determined
to cause security breaches in the next few weeks.
This has been confirmed by their vigorous campaign
of calumny against the military and their consistent
demand that soldiers must not be deployed for
security surveillance at the polling booths in the
forthcoming elections,” he said.
Mr. Fani-Kayode also alleged what he termed subtle
threat of violence by Mr. Buhari at an APC leadership
meeting in Abuja on Tuesday.
“General Buhari said that the patience of the APC and
its leaders were on test. One wonders what he means
by that and what he and his supporters intend to do
once that patience runs out.
“In an AFP news report of Friday, February 6, 2015, he
was asked if he would accept the outcome of the
presidential election no matter how unfavourable.
Listen to his answer: “I am not going to lose; so I
won’t answer that question.”
“Again, only yesterday, Wednesday, February 18,
2015, in an interview on ARISE Television, General
Buhari was asked what his reaction would be if he
loses the election. His answer was: “We shall see.”
“As far as we are concerned, these are ominous and
subtle threats to unleash violence on the Nigerian
people and all those that he perceives are his
enemies in the event of his losing the election,” he
said.
Mr. Fani-Kayode said Mr. Buhari has succeeded in
inflaming the destructive passion of his supporters in
the northern part of the country on many occasions
in the past.
“We recall his unacceptable remarks on May 15, 2012
when he said “if what happened in 2011 should
happen again in 2015, the dog and the baboon would
be soaked in blood”.
“We witnessed the orgy of violence that they
unleashed shortly after the announcement of the
results of the 2011 presidential election, which the
Sheik Lemu Committee, in its report to the Federal
Government, said was caused by Buhari’s
inflammatory statements.
“We recall with sadness the massacre of some of our
vibrant youth corps members who participated in the
2011 election as INEC’s ad-hoc staff in Bauchi State.
“We are concerned that the same thing may happen
again given General Buhari’s divisive and inciting
comments coupled with the APC’s violent
disposition,” Mr. Fani-Kayode said.
He said the attempt by the APC to discredit the use of
soldiers by promoting some “misleading audio
footage of the so-called rigging during the Ekiti
governorship election, in which one Captain Sagir
Koli was the dramatis personae, is childish and
absurd”.
He said the Nigerian Government deployed soldiers
in the Anambra, Edo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun
gubernatorial elections and all those elections were
devoid of violence.
“Remarkably, the APC won in Edo and Osun; APGA
won in Anambra, Labour Party won in Ondo while
PDP won only in Ekiti State,” he said.
He added that the basis on which the APC is agitating
for the exclusion of soldiers from the election by
sponsoring court cases is patently dubious and
untenable.
“The reason that the APC and its leaders do not want
soldiers deployed is to be able to intimidate voters
and unleash violence on the polity once they lose the
elections.
“They know that it would be far more difficult for
them to do that when soldiers are on the streets.
“With these dishonourable tactics and desperate acts
by the APC, we are the ones who should be worried
and who should be complaining but, unlike Buhari
and the APC, our patience is not running out because
we are committed to a peaceful election and we
completely reject the option of violence,” he said.
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SOURCE:
PREMIUM TIMES

FTC on Fri....wat a good omen.
Now,lemme scroll up & read.