INEC officials intimidate our agents, demand logistics fee – Soweto
The candidate of Solicialist Party of Nigeria vying to represent the people of Ifo constituency II at Ogun State House of Assembly, Hon Taiwo Hassan Soweto has accuse the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC of intimidating his party agents and demanding logistics fee from them. Soweto stated this in an interview with our correspondent after casting his vote at Olambe polling unit.
“With my observation so far at my own polling unit here in Olambe, everything appear to be going on fine but we have heard shocking reports at other polling units. We have heard report of intimidation of our agents and voters in a lot of places with INEC staff demanding that the agents must pay a particular amount of money as part of their contributions towards logistics for the election.
“We have heard cases of of vote buying in almost all the polling units. We are still collating reports from the field, which is why I need to get back home as soon as possible so that we can get in touch with our people on the field but I can only vouch for what I see here at my polling unit but in terms of other places; the polling unit at Agbado, the polling unit at Oke Aro, the polling unit at Adiyan, Ajegunle, we have heard shocking stories of widespread vote buying; of intimidation. At Ganhun village, the polling units there, we have heard report of our agents who have been chased out of the voting centre by the INEC staff in collusion with the police because they clearly refused to pay for the so called logistics that the INEC staff demanded.
“In other parts of the constituency like Sunre and Ososun, we have heard, even since yesterday night shocking report of all kind of manipulation going on. But I assure you that before the end of the day, we must have collated all our reports, we should able to make a statement to the media in terms of our own evaluation on what is going on.
“I will just urge people to be peaceful, which is why you can see trying to talk to number of people to try and help us to maintain the peace here.”
