Anambra Poll: Military Personnel Go Tough On Residents

There was pandemonium in Awka, the Anambra State capital yesterday ahead of today’s governorship election in the state as military personnel descended on people at the popular Aroma Junction, flogging people with horsewhips.

The military personnel were escorting a convoy of Peace Mass Transit mini-buses conveying workers of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to the commission’s state headquarters, Awka.

Noticing some of the standers-by who were videoing the convoy, the military escorts in the rear jumped down from their patrol van and descended on everyone, horse-whipping people indiscriminately.

A youth in his early 20s was thoroughly beaten, dragged on the road and his phone snatched from him while other standers-by ran helter-skelter for their lives.

One of the victims screamed, “Is this what we are going to see tomorrow (during today’s governorship election)? I won’t come out tomorrow. These soldiers will kill people tomorrow.”

The military personnel were chasing people, ordering them to surrender their phones, forcing some of them to flee with their phones.

One of the military personnel, however, snatched a mobile phone from one of the young boys whom they horsewhipped, jumped into the patrol vehicle and drove towards the INEC headquarters.

Similarly, two of the journalists accredited by the commission to cover the polls were stopped by a team of police operatives at one the entrances to the commission’s state headquarters and insisted that they should not drive in in their vehicles even when they presented their INEC approved vehicle gate pass.

When contacted by LEADERSHIP Weekend, the Deputy Inspector-General of police in charge of security supervision in the governorship election, DIG Ben Okolo promised to contact “the Assistant Inspector-General of Police who is in the INEC headquarters to handle the situation.”