Dismissal of Wike’s Six Police Details: Rivers Govt cries foul

*APC says dismissal indicates Wike’s alleged electoral offences

The Rivers State Government said it was saddened by the decision of the Nigeria Police to dismiss six police officers attached to Governor Nyesom Wike.

In a press statement signed by the Commissioner for Information, Dr. Austin Tam-George, and issued on Friday night, the government claimed that the police officers were subjected to a secret and unfair trial, “on totally fictitious charges of professional misconduct, during the rerun elections in Rivers State on the 10th of December 2016.”

The government viewed the dismissal as “a tragic day for professionalism and the respect for human rights in the Nigeria police force,” saying that “the dismissed officers committed no crime, other than foil a carefully orchestrated electoral heist by officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in collusion with the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Nigeria Police force.”

According to the statement, the claim by the Police that the affected officers misused their firearms while in the convoy of governor Wike on the 10th of December, 2016, was a wrong and cruel fabrication.

“Governor Wike did not depart from his official premises on the day of the election, and therefore had no use for an armed convoy. Two days after the elections, on the 12th of December, 2016, thousands of Rivers people, led by Governor Wike, resisted an invasion by the police on the premises of the Port Harcourt City Local Government Council premises, in a brazen attempt to rig the elections in favour of the APC.

“The Port Harcourt City Council was the Election Collation Centre for the Rivers
East Senatorial District. Throughout the period of the standoff between the invading police officers and the thousands of citizens who resisted them, Governor Wike and the officers around him conducted themselves with utmost restraint. The dismissed officers are therefore the latest victims of the medieval dictatorship of the APC government, a government that seems to lurch blindly in the miasma of its own incompetence and intolerance,” the government explained.

The state government, then, urged Nigerians to demand the immediate reinstatement of these officers, and for the Inspector General of Police to allow an independent inquiry, adding that the APC government has never hidden it’s alleged desperation to “overrun Rivers State,
colonize its people and loot the treasury of the State.”

The statement maintained that the Rivers people would continue to resist all attempts to enslave them.

Reacting to the dismissal, the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the state, said that the dismissal of those six police men was a clear indictment of Governor Nyesom Wike over his violation of electoral regulations in the December 10, 2016, election in the state.

The reaction was contained in a text message from Mr. Chris Finebone, the Publicity Secretary of the APC in the state, to the Daily Times, Friday.

The APC said: “We believe that it is just a tip of the iceberg of what will be unravelled that were perpetrated by the governor. Nigerians are waiting for the IGP Panel’s report that will seal the fate of Governor Wike and his accomplices within the INEC.”