The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has revealed why the collation of results of the Rivers State governorship election which held on March 9 was halted.
According to INEC National Commissioner, Mohammed Haruna, the electoral body was forced to stop the counting of votes and announcement of the results over what he described as a problem at the Commission’s office in Port Harcourt, the state capital.
He explained that before the decision to postpone the announcement of results, INEC had met with security agencies over the matter.
“We issued a state 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.
His comments came few hours after INEC’s National Commissioner, Information and Voter Education, Mr. Festus Okoye, said that the resumption for the collation of election result in the state was between April 2 and 5.
Although the commission said that it had agreed with stakeholders to use Port Harcourt as the venue of the collation.
The electoral body also stated that security agencies had given assurances that they would be neutral and professional.