About 503 voters in Ikot Nya, Nsit Ubium Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State failed to vote as a personality clash between the two campaign leaders of rival APC and PDP disenfranchised them.

Both men are former military administrators from the area: former military administrator of Ogun and Rivers states, Group Capt. Sam Ewang (rtd) and former military administration of the Akwa Ibom, Commodore Idongesit Nkanga (rtd).

Both men come from the same village and are at war as to whether the election should continue or not.

Ironically, the two cousins, Ewang and Nkanga, are the directors-general of APC and PDP governorship campaign organisations respectively.

Elections had to be stopped on Ewang’s order on the grounds that PDP had brought in mercenaries to vote for their party.

“Nobody is going to vote again. That’s what they did during the last election and won.

“Some people had votes before elsewhere and they went and brought them here to vote. It will never happen again this time around. The only solution is to stop the election,” Ewang said.

But Nkanga, who was busy pleading with the people to be calm, told the our correspondent that the allegation was false.

“Who are the mercenaries? Let them point out those who have voted before. They just want to disrupt the election. That has been their plan. They want to cause trouble.

“You see, people are going. We could have finished voting by now,” Nkanga stated.

The NYSC polling officer said only 202 persons had voted by 1pm when voting was stopped out of the 705 people in the unit officially called Afe Ewang, Unit 3, Mbiaso Ward 4.

•Sourced from a Daily Trust report.

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