PORT HARCOURT – The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has cancelled legislative re-run elections into the National and Rivers State House of Assembly, which was conducted on Saturday, March 19, in eight local government areas of the state. There are 23 local government areas in the state.
Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, for Rivers State, Aniedi Ikoiwak, had on Saturday night, suspended and cancelled the conduct of the national and state legislative re-run elections in Tai, Khana, Gokana, Eleme, Andoni and Bonny local government areas, on the grounds of widespread violence in the affected areas.
Ikoiwak, who had told journalists, on Saturday night, that the suspended re-run national and state legislative elections will be held on Sunday, later rescinded his decision. He said on Sunday that re-runs had also been cancelled in two more local governments areas, Etche and Asari-Toru.
A chieftain of the Peopkes’ Democratic Party, Chief Emma Anyanwu, had, on Saturday night, called for the cancellation of results from 14 units in Etche Local Government Area, citing violence and electoral irregularities.
The resident commissioner, in a press statement, Sunday, stated that the “suspension of the election is necessitated by the need to forestall breakdown of law and order or loss of lives and property in the event of further aggravation of the crisis”.
The statement reads in part: “Further to our earlier pronouncement on the suspension of the re-run elections in the six (6) local government areas of Khana, Bonny, Gokana, Andoni, Tai and Eleme, following disturbances and violence that impeded the electoral process in those parts of the state, it has become necessary to suspend the elections in Etche and Asari-Toru local government areas for the same reasons”.
“The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, needs to put all stakeholders on notice that we are still studying the situation in the other 15 (fifteen) local government areas of the state, where collation of results are currently going on”.
A source at the commission said that the commission would not conduct a re-run of the national and state legislative elections in the affected eight local governments areas until it has conducted a staff audit of its ad-hoc personnel that were deployed to conducted the elections on behalf of the commission.
Sources at the commission disclosed that some of the ad-hoc personnel deployed to the riverine areas were yet to return to the state headquarters of the commission, in Port Harcourt. And the commission is also perturbed that it has not been able to make telephone contact with some of its ad-hoc personnel.
