PDP condemns alleged confiscation of Rivers governorship election results by soldiers

chika ebuzor

March 10, 2019 3:56 PM

The party, in a statement sent to Pulse by its spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, accused the All Progressives Congress (APC) of sponsoring chaos in Rivers state.

Nigerian army

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has condemned the alleged confiscation of the Rivers state governorship election by soldiers.

According to reports from The Cable, officers of the Nigerian Army barricaded the state’s collation center.

The party, in a statement sent to Pulse by its spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, accused the All Progressives Congress (APC) of sponsoring chaos in Rivers state.

PDP also called on all lovers of democracy, to unite against what it described as a brazen attack on Nigeria’s democracy.

Nigeria Army on parade ece-auto-gen

Read the full statement below:

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) condemns the treasonable confiscation of the Rivers state governorship election results by soldiers and demands the immediate release to avert serious crisis in the state.

The PDP completely revile this 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). Such barefaced assault is only akin to a coup d’état and should not be allowed to stand

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.

Nigerian Army ece-auto-gen

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.

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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.

The Nigeria Army has constituted a committee to probe all cases of alleged misconduct by troops during the elections.

chika ebuzor