The Rivers State chapter of the Association of Local Government of Nigeria (ALGON) has raised alarm over alleged plot by the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State to destabilize the state during next year General Elections to pave way for the declaration of a state of emergency by the federal government.
ALGON through a petition made to the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Ibrahim Idris, said APC in Rivers State is using hoodlums to lunch deliberate and vicious attacks against its members in the State.
In the petition captioned: ‘A complaint over the incessant attacks on chieftains and members of the Peoples Democratic Party in Rivers State’, dated 23rd November, 2018, the group urged the IGP to order a full scale investigation into threats on the lives of party chieftains and ALGON members in the State.
It said that for the umpteenth time, chieftains and members of the PDP in the State have been subjected to what it called ‘a spate of unwarranted and unprovoked attacks by hoodlums who on prima facie and circumstantial evidence are being sponsored by the APC’, adding that a careful study of these attacks indicate that ALGON members were the primary target.
“It may be necessary to buttress our point further on this issue of targeted killings. On the 14th of November, 2018, during a voters’ sensitization rally at Ipo-Umadele in Ikwerre Local Government Area, the convoy of the Local Government Chairman, Hon Samuel Nwanosike came under a serious gunfire attack, leaving one person dead and six others severely injured”, said the group in the petitioned that was signed by Chairmen of the 23 Local Government Areas of the State.
They recalled that a similar attack was launched against Hon. Rowland Sekibo, another ALGON member and Chairman of Akuku-Toru Local Government Area and his entourage during a recent official engagement in Abonnema.
The group claimed that during the attack, one Mr. Boma D. Manuel was killed, while Mr. Tubokikiba Davies who was critically injured managed to survive, adding on the 9th of October, 2018 at Abonnema, one Mr. Sepribo Black-Duke, who until his death was the PDP Vice Chairman of Ward 3 in that LGA, was also brutally murdered in another vicious attack.
“ALGON and other well-meaning Nigerians are fully aware that the drama that is currently playing out is part of a grand design by the APC to create the impression of a general atmosphere of insecurity in Rivers State, carefully planned to come to a climax during the election period, with a view to providing an excuse for the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency in Rivers State or postpone the elections in the state to such a time when it would be possible to deploy all the federal might that would be needed to enable the APC-led federal government take over the reins of power in the State at all cost”, it posited.
ALGON condemned what it said was a wrong posture by the APC at the center, as it negates the tenets of democracy and the electoral process that flows from it.
It noted that elections are all about individual preferences of candidates who present themselves for election based on the manifesto they bring to the table as well as their popular acceptance to the electorate.
Concluding, ALGON said it would not fold its hands and watch its members ‘gradually decimated by power drunk politicians who are desperate to cling to power at all cost’, warning that no individual or group of persons have a monopoly to the means of violence.
