SAN FRANCISCO, February 21, (THEWILL) – The State Coordinator of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in Rivers state, Omotayo Adewoye, has declared that corpers would not be available for the rerun elections into the House of Representatives and House of Assembly seats for Etche Local Government Area of Rivers State.
The Independent National Electoral Commission had announced that the elections will hold on Saturday but Adewoye declared that the NYSC was pulling out due to the violence witnessed in previous elections in the state.
“I am just one month old in this state. When I received the letter calling for 300 interested youth corps members to come up for training to participate in the conduct of the elections in Etche, being quite aware of the Memorandum of Understanding between INEC and NYSC, and knowing that I was not a signatory to the agreement, I had the course to approach my national headquarters in Abuja,” Adewoye said.
“While I did that, I contacted the field officer in Etche where the election is going to hold to get members ready for the training which started on Monday to equip them fir the exercise.
“However, I am standing here today to inform you that NYSC will not take part in the exercise because of the obvious reason of violence in the last elections in the state in which we lost one of our youths.
“I have duly contacted my headquarters and I have been asked to stay action in the matter.”
The poll is scheduled to hold in over 200 voting units across eight registration areas. Election for the House of Representatives will hold in 147 units while election in the House of Assembly will hold in 74 units in Etche constituency two.
Meanwhile, the Acting Rivers State Commissioner of Police, Deputy Commissioner (Operations), Ahmed Magaji, has declared that adequate security would be provided for free, fair and credible polls as he pledged the neutrality of the Police.
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