Election observers exonerate military of wrongdoing in Rivers, Akwa-Ibom vanguardngr.com vanguardnews
A coalition of election observers, under the aegis of Coalition of Civil Rights Movement , has hailed the military’s exceptional conduct during the recently concluded Gubernatorial and State Houses of Assembly Elections in Nigeria.There were calls from certain quarters for President Muhammadu Buhari to withdraw the military following the completion of the Presidential and National Assembly elections.
INEC officials at the various polling units were less apprehensive due to the presence of security personnel’s that were in strategic places to ensure the safety of lives and properties during the polls, and consequently the general conduct of the elections by INEC was commendable and displayed a commitment to ensuring a credible, free and fair elections.
Some of these groups identified with some political parties during the voting process and therefore their credibility was called to question by security agencies for the fact they could produce their accreditation tags which were a requirement for access to the collation centres.The Gubernatorial and state house of assemblies’ elections were mainly contested by two parties . Lots of political horse-trading were recorded in most of the states, especially in states that recorded political upsets.
This trend was also transferred to the collation centres where final results were being collated. This caused a bit of tension that forced the collation officers to suspend collation to address the grey areas.Ukanafun Local Government Area of Akwa-Ibom State: In Tsafe LGA, collation was disrupted by armed men who stormed the collation centre chanting slogans of a political party and threatening to abduct INEC officials should the result not favour their party. INEC officials were harassed and intimidated by these groups of party supporters forcing collation activities to be suspended. Security operatives that consisted of the army, police and civil defence to restore order was drafted.
In all the collation centres monitored by our observers, the military performed the role of back-up to the police and civil defence operatives. They were mostly drafted in times of extreme escalation of hostilities. In places were the collation of results went smoothly, there was a presence of military operatives that stood guard to ensure that there were no cases of harassment and intimidation.
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