A spokesman of the Afenifere group, Mr Yinka Odumakin, has said that he collected Amina Zakari’s CV from the Kaduna State Governor Nasiru El-Rufai and submitted it to the Presidency.

Mr Odumakin disclosed this when he appeared as a guest on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily.

Odumakin’s assertion comes on the heels of a controversy that has stemmed from Zakari’s appointment as chair of the INEC Collation Centre Committee.

“I was the one who collected her CV from El-Rufai and gave to (late) Oronto Douglas (former Special Adviser to Goodluck Jonathan on Strategy and Research),” Odumakin claimed.

He explained that El-Rufai told him of Zakari, who had worked under him when he was a Minister of the Federal Capital Territory.

He said, “I have read of accounts where it was stated that President Buhari nominated her. It was not the President. It was the Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, who nominated her.

“When Jonathan came in 2010, his aide, the late Oronto Douglas, who was my brother and friend, approached the CSOs who were in the forefront of the fight to remove the cabal and he said his boss (Jonathan) had taken a decision to guarantee free and fair elections.

“He said he (Jonathan) does not want to know those who will be in INEC and therefore, he wants recommendations of credible Nigerians who could be in INEC. So, when Jonathan says he never knew Jega before his becoming INEC chairman, he was right.“So, they were headhunting for credible people and that is why you have people like Prof. Jega, Lai Olurode, and the rest of them coming as independent people nominated.

“But in the case of Amina Zakari, when that committee was working, we did not even know (anyone from) North-West and then Nasir el-Rufai also came to be part of the anti-Yar’adua cabal movement and was part of the process and he said there was this woman that worked with him as health secretary when he was the FCT minister.

“He said she was very savvy and he spoke very well of her. He said she was abroad so it took about two or three days to get her CV which I collected from him and gave to Oronto Douglas. So, beyond seeing her name on paper, Jonathan did not know who she was.

The Afenifere spokesman insisted that Zakari is a relative of President Muhammadu Buhari, a claim which has been highly debated for some weeks now.

He argued that the honourable thing for Amina Zakari to do is to resign her position at INEC.

Odumakin also spoke about the role of observers in the forthcoming elections in Nigeria; he said that for transparency in the polls, observer groups must be granted access into the INEC situation room.

He said the electoral umpire cannot be speaking of a free and fair election if the observers are left out from the collation centre where a full overview of the elections can accurately be obtained.

The Afenifere spokesman said, “There is nothing to hide, observers should be able to observe every phase of the election, it is wrong that observers are brought in only on the Election Day”.

He said the role of observers is not to interfere in the affairs of INEC but to be able to make their comments regarding what they have seen play out in the course of the election.

•Sourced from a Channels TV report

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