(Image from Global Risk Insights)
Abuja, (IINA) - Nigeria's electoral commission announced that scores of its personnel were killed, injured and kidnapped during an election re-run on Saturday in Rivers state, BBC reported.
An Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) spokesman blamed the violence on "armed thugs... allegedly acting on behalf of some politicians".
Voting was indefinitely suspended in most areas of the state, which has suffered from political unrest in the past.
A re-run was ordered after legal disputes over elections in 2015. Voters were choosing seats for the state and national assemblies, but not the governor as the Supreme Court ruled his election last March should stand.
INEC spokesman Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi denounced the ‘deviant behavior’ of those involved in disrupting the polls, saying that "fatalities, kidnappings, [and] ballot snatching", among other offenses had forced the commission to suspend the voting. However, results in areas which had already been declared would stand.
AG/IINA
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