WHAT looked like explosives from dynamites and gunshots were used by suspected militants to scare away potential voters in the Marine Base Area of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, yesterday.
Other irregularities, which characterised the voting, included hijacking, late arrival of materials, provision of fake result sheets and intimidation of voters by hoodlums working for some parties in many local government areas of the state.
Shortly after voting commenced in Port Harcourt, unspecified number of gunmen stormed the Marine Base area and detonated explosives suspected to be dynamites. This was followed by sporadic gunshots that lasted several minutes.
A source in the area told The Guardian that the explosions were so massive that the ground shook. He added that the shooting forced prospective voters to desert nearby polling stations for their homes.
During a visit to the area, some of the heavily armed militants were spotted in a polling station drinking beer, while no electorate dared come close. None of the security agencies was seen in the area.
When contacted, the Rivers State Commissioner of Police, Mr. Felix Ogbaudu, confirmed the shooting. He explained that there were two conflicting reports on the shooting.
One had it that militants in the state tried to wade off militants from other states that wanted to come and disrupt the polls in Rivers. The other report is that the explosive was linked to the Naval officers, who were chasing away militants.
At Omagwa, scores of armed youths, brandishing lethal weapons, were seen parading the streets of the village.
The Chairman of the Transition Monitoring Group in Rivers, Anyankwe Nsirimovu, described this as an “intimidating situation and you can see people are running away.”
Armed youths suspected to be militants clashed with military men on the Buguma-Ogbakiri road. According to the Police Commissioner, the militants were preventing election results from getting to Port Harcourt. It could not be confirmed independently if there were casualties.
In Buguma, people refused to vote because the electoral officers failed to provide result sheets. The same situation occurred in parts of Ahoada West and Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni local government areas. There was also no voting in Okrika and Ogu-Bolo.