ACCREDITATION and voting have begun in Rivers State as the (Rivers) State Independent Electoral Commission (RSIEC) conducts the local government poll in the state today, Saturday, October 5.

The exercise began as RSIEC insisted there was no going back on the election, despite a Federal High Court in Abuja stopping it.

In a video posted by Channels TV on its X handle, accreditation and voting were seen to have started at the Ikoku area, units 14 and 15, Ward 18, in Port Harcourt, the state capital.

Several other videos seen by The ICIR on social media, including Facebook and X showed some voters participating in the poll.

“For the avoidance of doubt, we emphasise unequivocally that the 5th October 2024 local government council elections in Rivers State will hold as scheduled, and there is no going back,” the RSIEC’s commissioner in charge of civic education and public affairs, Tamunotonye Tobins, said in Port Harcourt Saturday morning.

According to Tobins, the commission has transported non-sensitive materials to polling units across the state.

He said the updated 2023 voter register had been made available at all the 6,366 polling units in the state.

Tobins described the exercise as critical and in line with the order to RSIEC from the Supreme Court of Nigeria.

The ICIR reported that the inspector-general of police (IGP), Kayode Egbetokun, had ordered the increased deployment of personnel to beef up security in state despite the police withdrawal from the exercise.

In a judgement in July, the Supreme Court granted the 774 LGAs in the country financial autonomy.

According to the court ruling, it was unconstitutional for the state government to hold onto or manage the affairs of the LGAs and their funds.

Going by this judgment, many states like Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, Ekiti and others, have begun to conduct elections scrapping the caretaker committees they had previously appointed to allow voters to decide their local government leaders.