Officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission have held a meeting with officers of the Rivers State Police Command and other security chiefs to fine-tune security strategies for the rescheduled rerun elections in Etche and parts of Omuma local government areas on Saturday.
During the meeting, the Resident Electoral Commissioner, Aniedi Ikoiwak, briefed the gathering about the level of preparation by INEC for the concluding elections for Etche-Omuma Federal Constituency and Etche State Constituency Two.
Ikoiwak said the commission had distributed non-sensitive materials for the supplementary elections to cover one hundred and forty-seven polling units for the House of Representatives and seventy-four polling units for the state assembly seat.
He equally assured that sensitive materials for the elections would be delivered to the commission on Friday, a day before the elections.
The Resident Electoral Commissioner appealed for the support of the various political parties and their candidates to ensure a smooth conduct of the elections.
He disclosed that the Smart Card Readers would be strictly used, adding that only experienced officers would be deployed to conduct the elections.
According to Ikoiwak, “Let me inform you that we are going to have our Supervisors who will come from our headquarters in Abuja. We will also have our Collation officers who will come as staff of INEC.
“All the non-sensitive materials have been distributed and we are through with the training of SPOs. We are also through with the NYSC members who are domiciled in Etche.
“We have also been told that our sensitive materials will arrive at the Central Bank on Wednesday and we are going to make sure that the materials are directly delivered on Friday.
“We are ready for this election but we hope the politicians will not come with their antics and destroy our arrangements.”
On his part, the Acting Commissioner of Police in Rivers State, Ahmed Magaji, who is the Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of Operations, said the police was ready for the supplementary elections.
Representatives of the APC and the PDP who attended the meeting, used the opportunity to trade blames over the problems with the conduct of elections in Rivers State.
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