Edo State governor, Godwin Obaseki, and the police had some altercation at the Independent National Electoral Commission office in Benin City in the early hours of Sunday.
Obaseki was eventually forced to leave the premises by the Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Frank Mba. Mr Mba is the officer in charge of the Edo State governorship election.
Mr. Obaseki entered the INEC office to protest alleged manipulation of the governorship poll results, which seem to be favouring the All-Progressives Congress candidate, Senator Monday Okpebhollo.
Mr. Obaseki’s outrage stemmed from the lack of answers to his questions regarding the poll results.
In spite of his continuous inquiries, none of the INEC officials responded to his questions.
While that was ongoing, a group of APC supporters who also stormed the INEC office demanded that the governor leave the arena.
The confusion and protest eventually led to his forceful exit from the premises by a combined team of security agents at exactly 5a.m.
The incident had since raised concerns about the transparency and fairness of the electoral process in the state.
“At about 1 am, I got a report that collation was supposed to have been moved to the INEC head office,” Obaseki told news reports at the PDP situation room.
“I also got reports from our agents that PDP agents were not allowed into the collation centre. At that point in time, I called the REC to find an explanation of what was going on. There was no response.
“Then I went to the INEC office to meet with the REC and to understand what steps INEC was taken to continue the process of collation. When I got in there at about 2:00 am, I did not see any coalition taking place and the REC refused to come out to explain what the situation was.
“Subsequently, the DIG Police Frank Mba came in and had a meeting with me where I explained that if INEC was postponing or stopped the collation process, then as part of their rules, they should inform the public as to what next.
“As of 3:00 a.m., there was no information from INEC as to what was going to what was going on or what was going to happen next. It was subsequently after my insistence and meeting with Mr Frank Mba that INEC now released a statement at about 5:00a.m this morning informing the public that the collation process would start at 10 a.m. this morning.
“So, my go in there was essentially to obtain information from INEC because they had refused to put any information in the public domain as to what was going to happen with the collation process.”
