The
Commissioner of Police, Anambra State Command, Mr Bala Nasarawa, on
Sunday confirmed the arrest of an electoral official involved in
Saturday’s governorship election in the state.
Nasarawa told the News Agency of Nigeria in Awka that the command was interrogating the official whose name he declined to mention.
The commissioner was reacting to
statement credited to the Independent National Electoral Commission
Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, that the official, who bungled the
election in Obosi, Idemili North Local Government Area, had been
handed over to the police.
The police chief said,” I can confirm to
you that we arrested one official; but I don’t know if that is the one
you are talking about. ’’
Jega had said on a live television
programme monitored in Abuja, that the electoral officer was being
detained by the police in Anambra State.
He had said, “We made all the
preparations and decentralised the process of distribution of materials
in order to ensure that they get to the polling units in time for the
commencement of the election.
“That was before Saturday. Unfortunately
and regrettably – we are humans. We can do all the preparations, but if
people are determined to subvert the process, one way or the other they
will subvert it.
“So, they used our official. I think we
should be very careful when we have about 12,000 members of staff in
INEC and when one person commits an offence, you use it to generalise or
condemn everybody in INEC.
“Our electoral officer in charge of
Idemili North LGA , for inexplicable reasons, messed up the distribution
of ballot papers and result sheets. That was the cause of the delay in
the distribution of materials in Idemili.
“All materials were to have been
distributed by Friday evening, but for some odd reasons, they made sure
that they held onto some of the result sheets, and they also gave wrong
result sheets to different polling units.
“For Anambra election, as we did in Edo
and Ondo states, every polling unit has a unique result sheet. So, you
cannot take one result sheet to a different place, because it will not
work.
“I assured the stakeholders when we met
in Awka that materials must get to the polling units before
commencement of the election.
“So, when we discovered at about 1am
that there was this mix-up, and we tried to reach the electoral officer
and the supervisor and there was confusion, and we knew something was
fishy. We said there would be no deployment until we sorted out the
problem.
“As I speak, we have handed over the
electoral officer to the police because clearly what he did is a
sabotage of the electoral process, including the LGA supervisor.
“It took us until about 1pm to be able to sort out what they had jumbled up.
“We communicated with the community as
at 1pm that we were ready to distribute to all the other wards, and
materials were distributed.”
Jega said INEC officials consulted with the community before rescheduling the election.
Meanwhile, 20 election officials in the
state were attacked in the early hours of Sunday by armed robbery
suspects along the Onitsha-Owerri Expressway.
One of the officials, who preferred
anonymity, told NAN in Awka, that they were attacked at about 3am while
returning from Ihiala after the election.
The electoral officer said they were rescued by soldiers who were covering them from behind.
According to him, the suspects stopped them, but on sighting the security vehicle trailing behind, they took to their heels.
He said, “Some of us had already jumped out of the vehicle but the timely intervention of the soldiers saved us.
“As soon as the robbers saw other vehicles behind us in a convoy, they escaped into the bush.
“I wonder what would have happened to us, if there was no adequate security.’’
PUNCH
No comments:
Post a Comment