Voters who trooped out to exercise their franchise have beaten an official of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to pulp for allegedly coming with pre-filled result sheets to a polling unit.
According to witnesses, in the pre-filled result, the electoral umpire allocated 443 votes to the Peoples Democratic Party candidate (PDP), 31 votes to All Progressives Congress (APC) and 15 votes to Labour Party candidates for the Igboeze North/Udenu Federal Constituency.
INEC is conducting the re-run election in the constituency following the ruling of Appeal Court which cancelled the election in some polling units over the non-inclusion of the logo of the All Progressives Congress in the Form EC8A.
However, despite INEC officials arriving late in many polling units for the elections, INEC polling officers came without results or pre-filled results especially in polling units that have a great number of voters.
At Igogoro, Ozzi Ward 2 Unit 004, the presiding officer was lucky to have left with his life after the voters discovered the already filled result sheet even before the commencement of voting.
It was learnt that the INEC presiding officer, who gave his name Mr Ronald Ugwudani from Igbo-Etiti Council area, said the pre-filled result sheet was given to him from the local government by INEC.
Trouble for Ugwundani started when the angry voters asked him to show them result sheets following the news that so many other polling units havd no result sheets.
According to eyewitnesses, Ugwundani now told the voters that his SPO was coming with it. Not convinced irate voters pounced on him and he brought out the result sheets from his bag.
“I told them that the SPO will bring it, so, they forced me to search my bag, I don’t know that the result sheet is inside my bag. I showed them the result sheet and they wanted to kill me,” the INEC Staff was overheard narrating in a video.
The state Resident Electoral Commissioner, Dr Chukwuemeka Chukwu, had told journalists on Friday in Enugu that the commission had deployed over 700 staff and ad hoc staff as well as 700 armed security men for the re-run.
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