INEC suffers 41 attacks in 2 years

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has lamented that within the last two years, its offices and facilities have been attacked 41 times.

Chairman of the commission, Prof Mahmood Yakubu stated  this on Thursday in Abuja , the nation’s capital at an emergency meeting with the security agencies under the umbrella of the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on election security (ICCES).

But,  the ICCES emergency meeting, which was originally scheduled for last Monday, was rescheduled after the death of the former Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Lt-Gen Ibrahim Attahiru, who was also a member of the ICCES

INEC boss , however, noted that nine of the incidents happened in 2019 while 21 cases were recorded in 2020. He explained that In the last four weeks, 11 offices of the commission were either set ablaze or vandalized

Yakubu , further stressed that two of these incidents were caused by Boko Haram and bandits’ attacks while 10 resulted from thuggery during the election and post-election violence.

The INEC chief added the majority of the attacks, being 29 out of the 41, were unrelated to election or electoral activities, adding that 18 of them occurred during the #EndSARS protests in October 2020 while 11 other attacks were organised by unknown gunmen and hoodlums.