Electoral officials have finally found the missing 24,682 ballots meant for Tofa/Rimingado/Dawakin Tofa Federal Constituency in Kano after agents of the New Nigeria Peoples Party, NNPP, rejected the incomplete allocation.
Party agents were confused as to how two out of the 16 cartons of the ballot papers were tampered with, and 24,682 ballots taken therefrom.
An NNPP agent, Surajo Ahmad, told this newspaper that 265,182 ballot papers were allocated for the constituency by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, but to their surprise they discovered only 240,500 in the boxes.
“There are 16 cartons containing 16,200 ballot papers each. So when are sorting those meant for Tofa/Rimingado/Dawakin Tofa Federal Constituency, we discovered that two boxes were tampered with.
“So when we inspected the suspicious boxes, we discovered that a total of 24,682 ballot papers missing.
“We insisted that we would not allow the officials to carry incomplete ballots. When we searched everywhere without within the CBN facility to no avail, the INEC officials pleaded with us to come tomorrow.
“To our shock, when we came in the morning, the INEC officials said they found the missing ballots. The question is who in the first place tampered with the sealed boxes and removed the ballots? How did the ballots resurface despite the fact that we searched everywhere without seeing them yesterday?,” he asked.
Spokesman for INEC, Festus Okoye, did not respond to DAILY NIGERIAN inquiry over the matter.
