Group Faults INEC’s Interim Report On Rerun

The Stakeholders
Democratic Network (SDN),one of the observers that monitored the last week legislative rerun elections in Rivers State has condemned the interim report by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that the election was free and fair.
The Project Officer, Joseph Ekong who stated this last Saturday while speaking on a live radio programme,’View Point’said the electoral body refused to take stock of what happened in the last elections before releasing its reports.
Ekong said there was connivance of security agents and members of a particular political party to manipulate the process, adding that INEC was not accurate and correct in its report to the public.
According to him, ‘’ INEC failed to take stock of what happened in the last elections before releasing its interim report, adding that it should have looked at what happened before coming out with a report.
This he said would help forestall future occurrence, adding that large scale of election fraud happened in areas like Eleme, Etche, Khana and Gokana.
Ekong alleged that in most of these local government areas, politicians were seen giving out money to the electorate, while in other places, the security agencies compromised which was not fair in all ramifications for our electoral system.
‘’ What we witnesed was very disheartening with the involvement of the security agents even when the laws say armed security personnel should be 20 metres far from the polling units’’, he said.
He said this alone can compromise the choice of the voters, adding that a lot needed to be done to revamp our electoral system and make reforms.