An unknown number of voters were detained in an emergency cell in Ogboko, hometown of Governor Rochas Okorocha in Ideato South Local Government Area of the state as elections proceeded on Saturday.
Voting went on normally in the area but Okorocha complained that “they have arrested innocent citizens who have registered here for frivolous allegations.”
Okorocha said the voters that were being held constitute about 10 per cent of total voters in his home town.
Some of the arrested persons, who the soldiers did not allow journalists to see, according to Okorocha, were ex students of Rochas Okorocha Foundation School, who were on their way from Owerri to Okorocha’s hometown when they were arrested on Friday.
The soldiers were said to have questioned why they should come to Okorocha’s town where the governor claimed they were registered to vote.
Okorocha said he later spoke with the Brigade Commander and the Director of State Security Services in a bid to secure the release of the arrested persons, “but they kept tossing me around.”
The governor threatened to go to court to prove that the action of the soldiers was inhuman. He denied the allegation that some of the arrested persons were not of voting age and that some of the permanent voters cards recovered from the arrested persons didn’t belong to them, stating that some of them were graduates.
Okorocha also stated that the excess PVCs that were said to have been recovered from the arrested persons belonged to those of them that escaped after they were arrested by the soldiers and later went into hiding.
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