An eyewitness has described how an Igbo voter was allegedly attacked and harassed at a polling station in Ikorodu, a Lagos State suburb.
WITHIN NIGERIA learned that the incident occurred at the polling unit 35 behind Lagos Road in Ikorodu, where an unidentified woman was denied the right to vote because she was allegedly Igbo.
An eyewitness described being verbally assaulted by a group of suspected thugs at the polling station.
Voter turnout was low, so the polling unit was described as sparse.
According to an unnamed source, the victim who arrived at the unit around 12:45 p.m. while voting was still going on was attended to by INEC officials.
The source said;
She was accredited and then given the ballot papers, immediately she got to the voting booth, an old man approached her and peeped into the booth, when she protested, the man scream and then started shouting and in seconds other thugs came to join him.
The man who spoke in Yoruba started cursing that it won’t be better for them, are these people ooo, then he collected the woman’s ballot paper squeezed it and threw it on the floor.
The police officer on duty came but could not do much as the thugs started threatening to beat her and saying they won’t let her vote because here because she is Igbo.
Then some of us nearby pleaded with her and asked her to ignore them and leave in peace because they have powerful charms they can use to harm her.
All the while, the INEC officials on duty only sat there and watched as the attack continued, then later after the woman left they picked the ballot papers and dropped them in the ballot box.
But in less than 30 minutes, the woman returned with two men whom I believed to be her husband and a relative. They confronted the INEC officials and the policeman on duty.
They protested that her ballot papers be given back to her to vote, so the INEC officials opened the ballot box found her squeezed papers and gave them to her to cast her vote.
By then the leader of the thugs was absent and the other boys just stared as the woman voted and left.