Police Recover N111million From INEC Officials Involved In Rivers Re-run Election

 

The police on Tuesday disclosed that they recovered N111m from some officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) involved in the legislative rerun-election in Rivers state.

Ibrahim Idris, inspector-general of police (IGP), had set up a panel to investigate allegations of fraud and bribery in the December 10 election.

But Nyesom Wike, Rivers state governor, went to court to challenge the probe of the election.

However, the court did not give an order stopping the investigation.

On Tuesday, Damian Okoro, chairman of the panel, while presenting his report, said a “total sum of N111m out of N360m was recovered from 23 electoral officials”.

He said while three senior INEC officials got as much as N20m, some got N15m to influence the election.

Okoro alleged that there were some cases of misconduct on the part of some electoral officers, who were compromised in the line of duty.

“By this investigation, this panel has diligently unraveled what went wrong with the re-run election in Rivers, the details of which are contained in the report,” he said.

“We discovered that failure of leadership and follower-ship rather than law enforcement was responsible for the political upheaval in the state.”