Rivers rerun: Police investigation of election violence deceitful, state PDP says
The panel set up by the Inspector-General of Police to investigate the violence recorded in Rivers state during the just concluded Saturday, December 10, re-run election in the State has been described by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the state as a huge joke, intended to deceive the people.
In a statement by its Chairman, Chief Felix Obuah, the party noted that the “contradictions, inconsistencies, biases, and double standards that characterize” the alleged position of the Nigeria Police, with regard to the re-run election, made it foolhardy of any serious minded person or group to take such police panel seriously.
The statement which was signed by the Chairman’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Jerry Needam, argued that for such a panel to make sense to Rivers people, the Police High Command, especially the Inspector-General of Police should prove to Nigerians that he was not a member of the All Progressives Congress, APC, or at best, sympathetic to the cause of the APC.
Chief Obuah regretted “that the IGP, as the chief law enforcement officer of the country’s civil life should throw caution to the winds by demonstrating in very unmistakable terms in a manner that ensured that the APC have an edge in an election that he ought to be neutral.”
He alleged that the Police High Command ordered and withdrew all orderlies attached to all politicians, only to turn around to attach all the orderlies withdrawn from the PDP politicians to those of the APC.
“There was no APC candidate or Chieftain on that day of election that had fewer than 50 policemen attached to them while those of the PDP were left to their own fate. This was to enable them do what they did, intimidating, beating, traumatizing, and coercing electoral officers and forcefully carrying away the ballot boxes and electoral materials to their own collation centre.”
“For the IGP to pretend not to be part of all this nor knew about it and only to turn around to set up a panel to investigate the atrocities committed by his obedient messengers and APC paymasters smacks of hypocrisy and that the PDP cannot be further deluded to trust him or be part of such mere ‘cover-up’ panel,” the statement continued.
“Likening the police investigation panel by the IGP to a judge presiding over his own case, Chief Obuah said the outcome of such panel could rightly be predicted.
“All that we simply require of the Nigeria police is to clear themselves of all the blood of innocent Rivers youth they spilled, the recourse to patronizing the former militants who were in the vanguard of the military and police invasion of Rivers State and the mayhem unleashed on the people on that fateful December 10, re-run election.
“Except these clarifications are made, the PDP and the good people of Rivers State are wont to say emphatically that this is yet another big insult on their collective intelligence and must not be allowed to prevail,” the State PDP boss concluded.
