{"id":4671,"date":"2015-03-24T08:03:17","date_gmt":"2015-03-24T08:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=4671"},"modified":"2015-03-24T08:03:17","modified_gmt":"2015-03-24T08:03:17","slug":"police-make-a-u-turn-say-voters-can-protect-votes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=4671","title":{"rendered":"Police make a U-turn, say voters can \u2018protect\u2019 votes"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_4672\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4672\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Suleiman-Abba-360x225.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4672\" alt=\"Inspector-General of Police, Suleiman Abba\" src=\"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Suleiman-Abba-360x225-300x187.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"187\" srcset=\"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Suleiman-Abba-360x225-300x187.jpg 300w, http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Suleiman-Abba-360x225-128x80.jpg 128w, http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Suleiman-Abba-360x225.jpg 360w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-4672\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Inspector-General of Police, Suleiman Abba<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The Nigeria Police Force on Monday made a U-turn on its earlier warning to voters to stay away from polling centres after exercising their civic duty on days of elections.<\/p>\n<p>The Inspector-General of Police, Suleiman Abba, had on Thursday said there was no need for\u00a0\u00a0 voters to stay back after casting their votes because\u00a0\u00a0 two or three policemen would be stationed at every polling unit to guard their votes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCast your votes and go and cool down. If you remain there, there is a likelihood that you will commit an offence,\u2019\u2019 he had\u00a0\u00a0 said.<\/p>\n<p>But the Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission, Attahiru Jega, the All Progressives Congress, the Peoples Democratic Party and others faulted the warning, saying there was no aspect of\u00a0\u00a0 the electoral law that prohibited voters from stay behind to monitor\u00a0\u00a0 ballot counting.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs many of the voters may wish to remain to see the actual counting of the votes after voting has ended,\u201d Jega had stated.<\/p>\n<p>However, the Force Public Relations Officer, Emmanuel Ojukwu, in a telephone interview with one of our correspondents, said that people could stay behind as long as they maintained the peace, and obeyed the electoral guidelines.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnybody who commits any offence against the Electoral Act would be dealt with in line with the law. Voters are free to stay behind if they chose to,\u201d Ojukwu stated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Nigeria Police Force on Monday made a U-turn on its earlier warning to voters to stay away from polling centres after exercising their civic duty on days of elections. The Inspector-General of Police, Suleiman Abba, had on Thursday said there was no need for\u00a0\u00a0 voters to stay back after casting their votes because\u00a0\u00a0 two [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Suleiman-Abba-360x225.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-1dl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4671"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4673,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4671\/revisions\/4673"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}