Reports have emerged that Hudu Yunusa-Ari, the Residential Electoral Commissioner in Adamawa State, who was suspended for violating the provisions of the Electoral Act 2022, was flown out of the state capital, Yola, in a private jet last Sunday.
POLITICS NIGERIA reports that Yunusa-Ari left the city immediately after he illegally announced Aishatu Dahiru Binani, the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, as the winner of the governorship election in the state, which followed a supplementary election held on Saturday.
“After the illegal declaration, the rogue REC was flown out of Yola in a private jet,” a source confirmed.
Yunusa-Ari was flown out of Yola in a private jet with registration number NG-5N-IKO, findings by SaharaReporters revealed.
The identity of the owner of the Raytheon Hawker 800XP could not be ascertained, as further investigation only showed it was registered to an unknown owner.
Findings also showed that the private aircraft left Yola at exactly 12.58 pm on Sunday, shortly after Yunusa-Ari made the announcement, and touched down in Abuja at exactly 1.38 pm, after flying for 40 minutes.
Yunusa-Ari had bizarrely allocated 221,303 votes to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate and incumbent governor, Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri, which represented a 50 per cent shortfall from his initial 400,000 votes, even though the collation of results of the supplementary election had yet to be completed.
It is worth noting that the Adamawa State governorship election had been declared inconclusive on March 20, 2023, with Governor Fintiri leading with 421,524. The returning officer, Prof Mohammed Mele, declared the polls inconclusive because the number of cancelled votes exceeded the margin of victory.
When collation resumed after the supplementary election on Saturday, April 15, the returning officer, Mele, after collating results from about 10 local government areas, adjourned collation to 11:00 am on Sunday.
However, as early as 9:00 am, the Resident Electoral Commissioner, Yunusa-Ari, in company with the police commissioner in charge of election duties, Mohammed Barde, and some other heads of security agencies, announced Binani as the winner.
President Muhammadu Buhari swiftly approved Yunusa-Ari’s immediate suspension on Thursday evening pending the completion of an investigation by the Inspector General of Police on his conduct and actions during the election.
It is noteworthy that on March 19, a day after the governorship election in Adamawa State, there were reports of how Yunusa-Ari, in a leaked audio obtained by the newspaper, had instructed an election official to do everything humanly possible to make Binani win. Yunusa-Ari directed the electoral official to rig the election in favour of the APC candidate, according to the conversation in the leaked audio.
