Real reason we stopped collation, announcement of result in Rivers – INEC
The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has revealed real reason it stopped the collation of results of the Rivers State governorship election. While results from other states were either being announced or declared inconclusive, INEC suspended election in Rivers State. INEC National Commissioner, Mohammed Haruna, said the electoral umpire was forced to stop the counting of votes and announcement of the results. He said this was due to a problem that occured at the Commission’s office at Aba Road, Port Harcourt, the state capital. Haruna further explained that before the decision to postpone the announcement of results, INEC had met with security agencies over the matter. We issued a statement regarding both Rivers and Bauchi (states). The reason we had to stop the election was essentially that there were problems in our (INEC) headquarters office in Port Harcourt such that we couldn’t continue with the collation. So we decided that we will want to continue with the collation after we have met duly with the security services. We have done that, we had a meeting with them on March 19,” he stated. INEC’s National Commissioner, Information and Voter Education, Festus Okoye, had earlier announced that the resumption for the collation of election result in the state is between April 2 and 5.