RIVERS
State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has called for an
outright cancellation of the legislative rerun held in the state, saying
the exercise was marred with violence and irregularities.
Chairman of the party in the state, Dr Davies Ikanya, made the call while addressing a press conference at the party’s secretariat in Port Harcourt, on Monday.
This was as he accused Governor Nyesom Wike of undue interference in the electoral process, adding that a fresh rerun should be conducted and should be devoid of the pitfalls that characterised the last exercise.
“The position of APC is that the entire rerun was marred by irregularities, violence and unlawful interferences by Nyesom Wike, the governor of Rivers State.
“[There were also] inadequate security, compromised process, especially with indiscrimate, irregular and untrained ad hoc staff in some cases, amongst other very serious issues.
“APC calls on the INEC chairman and its entire management team to cancel the Rivers State rerun, to enable all the pitfalls earlier enumerated to be corrected before a fresh rerun is held,” he said.
Ikanya alleged that the first strategy of Governor Wike was to deliberately saturate the atmosphere with his threat of death and violence against INEC personnel for the rerun.
He said, some few days to the election, Wike accused the INEC federal commissioner who was sent to conduct the election of plotting to swap election results without concrete evidence.
The Rivers APC chairman further alleged that the rerun election witnessed a well-planned spate of violence across rivers state, adding that the genesis of this was the repeated threats and the killing of two soldiers in two local government areas in the state.
“It was glaring that security was inadequate across the state. The only fairly secure areas were the local government area headquarters where a handful of police and army personnel were deployed, but were unable to effectively cover other volatile areas and population centres of the local councils.
“In some places like Emohua, no returning and collation officers reported for work, giving way for unknown ad hoc personnel to be recruited for a very sensitive job of result collation. In Gokana, Khana and Andoni, PDP thugs held electoral personnel hostage, leading to the suspension of the process,” he said.
The APC chieftain also alleged that strange and untrained ad hoc staff were used by INEC on election day, saying it became obvious that the messages of threat by Governor Wike drove fear into trained ad hoc personnel.
The trained ad hoc staff, he said, got scared and refused to turn up for election duties, forcing INEC to engage the services of unknown persons with no training and background checks whatsoever to work as ad hoc personnel.
“The situation led to confusion and alleged sabotage at various places and, in the process, electoral officers [EOs] took over the work of returning officers (ROs), with some of them declaring results which is not their job,” he said.
He also said the election should be cancelled, based on the fact that PDP and Governor Wike had, at various times, publicly said the result sheets for the exercise were fake.
He said, INEC, by declaring results for PDP, using the alleged fake result sheets, had “created a big credibility problem for the process. We condemn the attempt by INEC to accept and uphold results declared on fake result sheets.”
Chairman of the party in the state, Dr Davies Ikanya, made the call while addressing a press conference at the party’s secretariat in Port Harcourt, on Monday.
This was as he accused Governor Nyesom Wike of undue interference in the electoral process, adding that a fresh rerun should be conducted and should be devoid of the pitfalls that characterised the last exercise.
“The position of APC is that the entire rerun was marred by irregularities, violence and unlawful interferences by Nyesom Wike, the governor of Rivers State.
“[There were also] inadequate security, compromised process, especially with indiscrimate, irregular and untrained ad hoc staff in some cases, amongst other very serious issues.
“APC calls on the INEC chairman and its entire management team to cancel the Rivers State rerun, to enable all the pitfalls earlier enumerated to be corrected before a fresh rerun is held,” he said.
Ikanya alleged that the first strategy of Governor Wike was to deliberately saturate the atmosphere with his threat of death and violence against INEC personnel for the rerun.
He said, some few days to the election, Wike accused the INEC federal commissioner who was sent to conduct the election of plotting to swap election results without concrete evidence.
The Rivers APC chairman further alleged that the rerun election witnessed a well-planned spate of violence across rivers state, adding that the genesis of this was the repeated threats and the killing of two soldiers in two local government areas in the state.
“It was glaring that security was inadequate across the state. The only fairly secure areas were the local government area headquarters where a handful of police and army personnel were deployed, but were unable to effectively cover other volatile areas and population centres of the local councils.
“In some places like Emohua, no returning and collation officers reported for work, giving way for unknown ad hoc personnel to be recruited for a very sensitive job of result collation. In Gokana, Khana and Andoni, PDP thugs held electoral personnel hostage, leading to the suspension of the process,” he said.
The APC chieftain also alleged that strange and untrained ad hoc staff were used by INEC on election day, saying it became obvious that the messages of threat by Governor Wike drove fear into trained ad hoc personnel.
The trained ad hoc staff, he said, got scared and refused to turn up for election duties, forcing INEC to engage the services of unknown persons with no training and background checks whatsoever to work as ad hoc personnel.
“The situation led to confusion and alleged sabotage at various places and, in the process, electoral officers [EOs] took over the work of returning officers (ROs), with some of them declaring results which is not their job,” he said.
He also said the election should be cancelled, based on the fact that PDP and Governor Wike had, at various times, publicly said the result sheets for the exercise were fake.
He said, INEC, by declaring results for PDP, using the alleged fake result sheets, had “created a big credibility problem for the process. We condemn the attempt by INEC to accept and uphold results declared on fake result sheets.”
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