The Nigeria Police Force has recovered more than N111 million  from INEC officials alleged to have been bribed by Rivers state government to rig the December 10, 2016 legislative rerun elections in the state.

The panel constituted to investigate the electoral and other offences perpetrated during the December 10 Rivers Parliamentary re-run election has said that it recovered N111 million from 23 INEC officials.

The Chairman of the panel, Damian Okoro, made the allegation while presenting the team’s report to the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, in Abuja on Tuesday.

He alleged that three senior electoral officers collected N20 million each out of the N360 million given to them by Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers, while the remaining officers received N15 million each.

Mr. Wike has denied any wrongdoing despite an audio showing he may have compromised some INEC officials financially. The Rivers Governor also accused the police of bias and refused to cooperate or allow state officials cooperate with the police investigation team.

Mr. Okoro, a deputy commissioner of police, further alleged that there were some cases of misconduct on the part of some electoral officers, who were compromised in the line of duty.

“By this investigation, this panel has diligently unravelled what went wrong with the re-run election in Rivers, the details of which are contained in the report.

“We discovered that failure of leadership and followership rather than law enforcement was responsible for the political upheaval in the state,” he said.