Rerun: Rivers PDP heads to tribunal to challenge Abe’s victory
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Rivers State yesterday announced that it has headed to the Election Petitions Tribunal to challenge the declaration of Senator Magnus Ngei Abe as winner of the just concluded re-run election in the Rivers South East Senatorial District by the Independent National Election Commission, INEC.
In a statement from the office of the State Chairman of the PDP, Chief Felix Obuah, the party announced that the declaration of Abe as winner in the December 10, 2016, rerun election was a grave error as available records allegedly showed that the military, SARS personnel, and other security agencies massively rigged the election in the whole of the Rivers South East Senatorial District in favour of Mr. Abe.
According to the statement, which was signed by Obuah’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Jerry Needam, the State PDP Chairman made the position of the party clear on the mandate declaration of Senator Abe in his Goodwill message delivered to Ogoni people on the 2017 Great Ogoni Day Celebration.
While wishing the Ogoni people a very successful Ogoni Day Celebration, Chief Obuah said that the right of the people of Rivers South East Senatorial District to select the candidate of their choice through the ballot box was sacrosanct and must not be toyed with.
He stressed that the PDP would “never rest until this injustice against the people is addressed and the opportunity to have a candidate of their choice given to them as of right.
“The party had sufficient evidences to show that what happened in the Rivers South East Senatorial District on December 10, 2016, was nothing but a display of military bravado against the PDP and the Ogoni people, orchestrated by the combined forces of Magnus Abe, Barry Mpigi, on one hand, and the men of SARS, Police, and Army on the other hand,” the statement read.
The PDP Chairman stated that he was convinced that the PDP would have the last laugh at the Election Petitions Tribunal, adding that Senator Abe was “only a Caretaker Senator of the All Progressives Congress (APC) who was smuggled into the Senate with the connivance of INEC, SARS, Army and the Police, assuring that his tenure in the Senate would be short-lived.”
Chief Obuah called on the people of Rivers South East Senatorial District, especially Senator Olaka Nwogu “whose mandate has been stolen” to remain calm and hopeful, adding that “anything taken through the backdoor would not stand, as Senator Nwogu would surely reclaim his mandate. Abe’s desperation for power would soon be exposed as evidenced by his recent clandestine activities.”
He alleged that Senator Abe had in the past weeks been concocting results in his private residence, just to ensure that they tallied with the figures allegedly manufactured for him by INEC.
Reacting to the allegation by the PDP that the result of the rerun election in which Senator Abe defeated his closest rival, Mr. Olaka Nwogu, for the Rivers South East Senatorial District was concocted, the Abe’s Media Committee, in a statement signed by its spokesman, Mr. Parry Saroh Benson, said it that was a direct insult to the collective mandate to the Senator.
“Suffice it to say that all the hullabaloo about concocting figures in the elections exists in the imagination of Felix Obuah, who is still mourning the defeat of PDP in the district despite boasting to the public that Senator Abe and the APC will lose,” the committee said.
