Rivers guber: Amaechi asked soldiers to invade INEC offices, forcefully take results to barracks – PDP cries out
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Sunday alleged that soldiers under the directive of the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi invaded offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in Rivers State and forcefully took away collated results to their army barracks.
PDP claimed that the results will be altered in Army Barack’s by agents of the All Progressives Congress, APC, which have been stationed there.
The party condemned the treasonable confiscation of the Rivers State governorship election results by soldiers and demanded the immediate release to avert serious crisis in the state.
PDP described the “subversive act by soldiers, who seized and diverted the results to an army barrack in Port Harcourt and calls on all lovers of democracy, to unite against this brazen attack on our democracy by the Buhari Presidency and All Progressives Congress (APC).”
In a statement by its spokesperson, Kola Ologbondiyan, PDP said: “such barefaced assault is only akin to a coup d’état and should not be
allowed to stand.”
The statement reads: “Nigerians watched in bewilderment as soldiers, in the company of APC thugs invaded polling units in Rivers state, unleashed violence on voters, disrupted polling processes and hauled away electoral materials, just because the APC is not in the ballot, following its self-inflicted exclusion from the election.
“The use of soldiers to ambush the electoral process and confiscate results is an extreme scheme by the APC and the Buhari Presidency to enmesh the Rivers state governorship election in controversy, seeing that there is no way they can take away victory from the PDP.
“Soldiers, allegedly under the directive of the Director-General of the Buhari Campaign Organization and Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, invaded INEC offices, waylaid INEC officials and forcefully took away collated results to the army barracks, where APC agents have been stationed to alter figures and destroy evidences of PDP’s victory.
“We want Nigerians to note that the APC is frustrated that it is not in the ballot in the Rivers state election and for that, it has resorted to violence, killings and heavy militarization of the area, in the attempt to disrupt the electoral process, seeing that the PDP had already won.
“What the APC and its compromised soldiers fail to note is that the PDP already has valid documents of all the results as delivered from all the polling units where elections held across the state and that the figures are with all the stakeholders.
“Therefore, deploying soldiers to confiscate the results will not change the victory already recorded by our party in Rivers state.”