Toby Okechukwu, member representing Awgu, Aninri, Oji-River federal constituency, at the federal House of Representatives, has attributed the low violence recorded during the Presidential and National Assembly to awareness and sensitisation of the people at the grassroots. He said even as the card reader was a failure, the people exercised patience and followed the instructions of the INEC officials. The House member, who said he used the incident form because the card reader failed, called on the INEC to make proper arrangement, saying that such technology should have been used in smaller elections.
“Even though it accepted and reorganised the card it could not affirm it because of finger print, and the feedback I am getting from my constituent is that it is the same in all the places resulting to the use of incident form,” he said. He also complained that the number of the incident forms were not many because it was not anticipated the card reader would fail. The member representing Awgu South in the Enugu State House of Assembly Uduji Nelson, said the challenge is that the card reader failed woefully, and called on INEC to improve on its activities before the next election. He however, expressed happiness that the election was violent-free although that the turn out in his area was not so impressive. One Alex Chukwu representing APC said: “Well, what I saw was that every- body was allowed to vote, there was no quarrelling of any sort; I have not seen any underground plan to cheat everything is still go- ing according to the rules”.
The APC candidate for Enugu East who was the state chairman for the party Ben Nwoye called for the cancellation of the election in Enugu. He accused the state resident electoral commissioner Chukwuemeka Onukagu of rigging them out. Also, the PDC, the plat- form on which former governor of the state, Chimaroke Nnamani contested, protested to the INEC saying that the outcome of the election in Enugu East where the sitting Senator Gill Nnaji was declared winner was fake. However, all these pockets of protest are not noticed by the larger citizens of Enugu as Businesses and normal vehicles are operating normal with- out any disturbance. The banks and other financial houses were working and all the markets were open.
