Over a dozen journalists accredited to cover the supplementary election in Imo State were Saturday ‘seized’ and grounded by a detachment of over 45 soldiers at Nwaorieubi in Mbaitoli Council Area of the state.
Having passed several police checkpoints with their Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) tags and identification, the journalists came to a momentary end of their monitoring, when the soldiers stopped the newsmen refusing them from proceeding on the monitoring and insisting they cannot go back to town.
Explaining their actions, the soldiers said the names of their media organisations were not in the list handed down to them by INEC for the monitoring exercise.
However, on closer perusal of the list, the newsmen discovered that no media organisation was listed on it.
The soldiers, however, said they cannot allow the newsmen to proceed or go back as it was against their directive for the election.
While the exchanges were going on, a wedding convoy was flagged down by the soldiers and also ‘impounded’.
After their pleas fell on deaf ears, the bride broke down in tears lamenting the situation.
Speaking to newsmen, the bride said that the wedding was earlier scheduled for April 11 and when the governorship election was shifted to April 11, they moved the wedding to the April 25 but to their shock, the election went into a run-off which was incidentally fixed for the 25th.
The visibly sad bride further explained that having repeatedly shifted the wedding, it became too expensive for them to continue to move the wedding which was why they decide to hold the wedding in spite of the supplementary election which they assumed should only affect the cancelled polling units.
