Christian Ogbuagbu, the Returning Officer in Imo State has handed over two collation officers to security agents over the manipulation of results in Ohaji/Egbema Local Government Area.
The collation officer, Ehirim Kelechi, told the RO that after issuing duplicates of the results to party agents, he proceeded to alter the original copy, injecting more than 1,000 votes to the results.
This was discovered after the results he read out at the collation centre was disputed by party agents and the RO compared the results.
The RO subsequently handed the matter over to security operatives who arrested them.
He said: “Ladies and Gentlemen, firstly, the results of the ward, Obitti/Mgbishi, stands cancelled because after the CO had given the results to the agents.
“I have been advised to note that the action constitutes electoral malpractice. I hereby hand over the case to the security agents to handle.”
Earlier, Uche Onyeagocha, the PDP agent had raised the alarm that Governor Rochas Okorocha was using the electoral officers to inflate results of the election favour of the candidate of the Action Alliance (AA), Uche Nwosu.
He was surprised that the result of the troubled units were about to be admitted by the compromised INEC staff, and this resulted in chaos that led to the destruction of results and eventual arrest of the INEC staff by security operatives.