The Peoples Democratic Party on Wednesday refused to sign the final result sheet for the March 28 presidential election, which it lost to Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari(retd.) of the All Progressives Congress.
This was despite that the PDP presidential candidate, President Goodluck Jonathan, had conceded defeat earlier before the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission and Chief Returning Officer of the election, Prof. Attahiru Jega, returned Buhari as the President-elect at about 3.44am on Wednesday.
One of the PDP agents, Godsday Orubebe, who had earlier caused a row when the collation exercise continued on Tuesday, had left the National Collation Centre in Abuja before the announcement of the final result by Jega.
The second agent, Bello Fadile, was present when party agents were being called upon to sign the result sheet.
At about 3.36am when Fadile approached the podium, where Jega was seated, instead of signing the result sheet as other agents invited before him had done, he only spoke few words in hushed tones to the INEC boss, shook hands with him (Jega) and returned to his seat.
Fadile however waited till the end of the event at about 3.53am to receive a copy of the result.
Jonathan had, implicitly, signed it and there is no problem if thousand of Godwin Orubebe ran away after disgracing himself with a bad public conduct, least expected from a former Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, in the full glare of batteries of camera beaming the event around the world.
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