There was complete chaos on Sunday morning at a Collation Centre in Owerri, Imo State, as two agents of different parties threw caution to the wind and engaged each other in an open fight.
Eyewitnesses report that as the collation of result of Saturday’s off-cycle governorship election in the state led by the returning officer, Prof Abayomi Fasina, Vice Chancellor of the Federal University in Oye, Ekiti, began at 2:40am on Sunday, agents of different parties began a series of protests with some claiming different levels of rigging and under hand dealings.
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A witness who was at the collation centre when the fight broke out, said a Labour Party (LP) agent identified as Calistus Ihejiagwa, was seriously beaten and bundled out of the centre by other agents after he consistently objected to the results collated from the local government areas.
Ihejiagwa was said to have disrupted the free flow of the collation, saying the results brought before the state collation centre were at variance with what was on the Result Viewing Portal (IREV).
Ihejiagwa reportedly said he had a petition to submit before the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) but he was shut down by the Returning Officer who said it was not in his purview to receive petitions.
The LP agent was then viewed as an interruption by his colleagues who subsequently gave him a thorough beating before bundling him out of the collation centre at 5am while collation continued.