Anambra election materials snatched, destroyed in some areas — REC

The Anambra State Resident Electoral Commissioner, Nwachukwu Orji, has said election materials were snatched and destroyed by community members during Saturday governorship poll in Anambra State.

He stated this during an interview with Channels TV on Saturday.

He said, “Part of the report we got regarding our deployment in different polling units — we were not able to finish deployment in some polling units because of several reasons. One of the reasons is that we were prevented by community members in some local government areas from deploying.

“So, we have some resistance in these places. While election materials were snatched and destroyed in some other places. Example is Oba 1 & 2 wards, RAs, Idemili South LGA where materials up to 57 polling units were snatched.”

He also spoke on what would happen to these affected places where materials were snatched, saying, “The decision will be taken after this, but the process has to be completed and a thorough assessment of what has happened will take place.”

He also said some of the transporters paid to move election materials in the gubernatorial poll did not deliver after they had been paid.

Orji decried the attitude of some ad-hoc staff who pulled out prior to the election day.

“The challenge we had was that, some of the transporters we make arrangement with and assigned certain fee upfront declined to render their services. Also, some of the recruited ad-hoc staff dropped out and could not continue in the process,” he said.

Orji had earlier announced an extension of the closing time for voting exercise to 4pm to cushion the effects of the late arrival of INEC ad-hoc staff and materials for the election.

Although Orji said the extension was peculiar to polling units that did not start voting at 8.30am, several polling units in Awka South had stopped the election as of the time of the announcement.

The election was extended to Sunday, November 7 following some logistic reasons.