Rivers rerun: 50 ‘thugs’ arrested in Etche LGA

A group of boys numbering about 50, suspected to be political thugs have been arrested by security agents in Ulakwo ward 13 for allegedly trying to disrupt the on-going legislative election in Etche local government area of Rivers state.

According to NAN, the boys were arrested from different units of the Ward.

Reacting to the incident, Ikoiwak Aniedi, resident electoral commissioner in charge of Rivers, urged the media to focus more on electoral violence in Nigeria.

He said while the commission was saddled with the responsibility of conducting elections, the issue of electoral violence should equally be considered.

Aniedi appealed to journalists to report exactly what they witnessed during elections.

This, he noted would go a long in checking some of the violence perpetrated during elections.

He, however, said that the police would brief the commission officially on the situation on ground.

At Obite ward 10, unit 3, the attempt of some political thugs to snatch a bag of electoral materials from INEC officials was repelled by the police.

The electoral official, who declined to disclose her name, informed NAN that the election was peaceful in the unit except for the incident.

She said when the result was about to be counted, “we saw some thugs rushing to us, we quickly packed all the materials in a bag’’.

“But they struggled the bag with us and took it; fortunately, the police intervened and rescued the bag from them, gave it back to us and escorted us to INEC office in the area.”

Nnamdi Omoni, police spokesman in Rivers, said the police had not made any arrest yet, and so could not comment on what other security agents had done.

The election is the conclusion of the 2015 general election to fill up Etche state constituency II and Etche/Omuma federal constituency seats.

Elections in the area were postponed indefinitely as a result of violence.