Aliyu Garba, the commissioner of police for the Ebonyi State, said on Wednesday that hoodlums had never stormed the Independent National Electoral Commission, or INEC, office in the Iboko community of the Izzi Local Government Area, which was completely destroyed by fire.
The Commissioner stated that the fire originated inside the office and not from an outside attack on the INEC site.
According to DAILY POST, opposition parties are to accountable for razing the aforementioned INEC office, which is situated in the Izzi LGA, by 60%.
This information was provided by Aliyu in a statement that she released to reporters in Abakaliki via the PPRO, Chris Anyanwu.
He claimed that after conducting an immediate assessment, the leadership determined that the fire was coming from the office building.
According to him: “There was no sign of external attack or breakage into the building before the fire outbreak. The fire destroyed inflammable items such as generating sets, plastic buckets/cans, ballot boxes, cubicles, etc, kept in the building which are capable of escalating the inferno.
“There was no electric power supply at the time of the incident to infer/suspect same as a probable cause. There were no sensitive materials in the building as confirmed by the Electoral Officer in charge of the area,
“No fire-fighting tools were installed in the office/premises. Some left-over PVCs locked in the steel cabinet were destroyed by the fire. Record of the left-over PVCs engulfed in the inferno are intact with the E.O. of the area.
“The value of items destroyed thereby is yet to be ascertained. The immediate cause of the incident is yet unravelled, and the same INEC office was engulfed in a similar circumstance sometime ago,” he stated.
The Commissioner, however, called on the government at all levels and the national chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, to install solar-powered CCTV cameras and fire-fighting tools in all INEC offices to forestall such incidents ahead of the elections.
