PDP candidate didn’t offer me $1m, says Adamawa REC

Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Adamawa State Kassim Gaidam has refuted a news report that he rejected offer of $1m bribe and a house in Dubai from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.

“We wish to refute this story as not emanating from the REC. The REC is presently focused on efforts to deliver free, fair and credible elections and has no time for indulgence in distractions intended by the peddlers of the falsehood,” said a statement issued yesterday by the Head of Voter Education Department of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Adamawa State, Rifkatu Duku.

The statement called on Nigerians to disregard “this fake story as the figment of the infantile imagination of its authors, which has no basis on facts!”

A news report had alleged that Atiku had given each REC around the country $1m to compromise the card readers to favour him against incumbent president and candidate of the All Progressives Congress APC), Muhammadu Buhari.

The Adamawa INEC resident commissioner who spoke further on the allegation while administering oath of neutrality on INEC staff at the commission’s state office in Yola, said neither Atiku nor any other politician or group of politicians had given him or any INEC staff any form of bribe.

“Nobody has offered us inducement and we are under nobody’s influence,” he asserted.