Rivers Re-Run: 23 Electoral Officers Placed On Interdiction

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has decided to place all 23 Electoral Officers who served in the December 10th Rivers re-run elections on interdiction.

The decision came against the back drop of the report received from the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) informing the Commission that the 23 Electoral Officers indicted in the Rivers Re-run elections have been charged to court.

The Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, Prince Solomon Soyebi at a press briefing, held at the Commission’s Headquarters yesterday, explained the reason for the action. He said: “The Commission has repeatedly said that it will cooperate with security agencies for the prosecution of any of our staff found to have violated the integrity of the electoral process”.

He continued: “accordingly, at our meeting today, the Commission decided to apply the provisions of the INEC Terms and Conditions of Service to all those charged to court, since it constitutes gross misconduct. The penalty for this is interjection. All the 23 Electoral Officers will be placed on half salary and will not report for duty pending the determination of their respective cases by the court”.

On the recommendation by the Disciplinary Committee on staff indicted by the EFCC Report for misconduct during the 2015 General Elections, the IVEC Chairman explained the Commission has decided to defer its decision on the EFCC Report to enable it reconcile with the DPP report. This he said was in view of the fact that some of the staff were also among those being prosecuted by the DPP.

Prince Soyebi, used the opportunity to announce the scheduled dates for the Commission’s routine quarterly consultations with stakeholders as follows:

A.  Tuesday, 14th March has been scheduled for meeting with Political Parties.
B.  Wednesday, 15th March has been scheduled for meeting with Civil Society Organizations
C.  Friday, 17th March has been scheduled for the meeting with the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election  Security (ICCES)
D.  Monday, March 21st March is the day scheduled for meeting with Media organizations.