INEC suspends reps, senate elections in Rivers

INEC Resident Electoral Officer (REC) in Rivers, Johnson Sinikiem, announced the suspension Tuesday.

The protests and pressures on the INEC Rivers REC had become fearsome after the Collation Officer for PHALGA had declared the PHALGA Federal Constituency 1 election won by candidate of the Labour Party (LP).

The REC, Sinikiem at the State Collation Center in Port Harcourt, yesterday declared, “INEC Rivers has suspended PHALGA II House of Representative and PHALGA Senate Elections for alleged irregularities. The Commission will conduct thorough investigation before further action will be taken.”

INEC, he further noted, “has been notified of threat to life of the State Collation Officer for the Presidential Election in Rivers, Prof Teddy Charles Adias, Vice Chancellor, Federal University of Otueke.

“I urge the public and our critical stakeholders to know that the function of a State Collation Officer is just to collate results of elections conducted at the various Local Government Areas of the State.

“He is not a Supervising Presiding Officer nor a Presiding Officer that conducts elections at the polling units. He is only collating results already collated at the Local Government Area level that
cannot be changed except by the verdict of an Election Tribunal.

“We urge those concerned to seize forthwith in unleashing threats because his job does not involve accreditation, voting, counting, computation, validation etc ..of votes by parties at primary and Secondary levels.

“I draw attention of Security Agencies, especially the Election Commissioner of Police for Rivers State that is equally Co Chairman of Inter Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security to this attempt to truncate the Collation of Presidential Election result in Rivers State.”