Governorship Poll: PDP Cautions Against Militarisation of South-South

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Thursday raised the alarm over  what it described as the illegal occupation and provocative siege of PDP states in the South-south, including Bayelsa, Rivers, Delta, Akwa-Ibom and Cross River States by the military ahead of the March 9  governorship and state assembly elections.

The National Publicity Secretary of the party, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan, while addressing a press conference on Thursday, alleged that it was clear that after using the military to unleash violence, fabricate 25 per cent ballot for President Muhammadu Buhari across the South-South states and other PDP strongholds, the All Progressives Congress ( APC) now wants to use the military to fight its governors, suppress its members and forcefully take over the states.

According to him, “This illegal operation is to further militarise the South-South zone, use soldiers to suppress voters and re-enact the massive rigging of polls for the All Progressives Congress (APC), as was done in the widely discredited February 23 presidential election.”

Ologbondiyan said that Nigerians already know how APC leaders from the South South are going around boasting that the military would use violence to give them governorship election victoory, the same way it did during the presidential election, where innocent Nigerians were brutalised and murdered.

The PDP warned  in vry unequivocal terms, that those who sow the wind should also be ready to reap the whirlwind.

Ologbondiyan noted that it is now clear to all that the 2019 elections are not between the PDP and the APC, but a war between the state apparatus of power and the PDP, adding that the PDP cannot continue to fold its hands in the face of the killings and suppression of voters by the APC. 

He stressed that Nigerians were witnesses to how 13 persons were murdered in Akuku-Toru Local Government in Rivers State, in addition to those killed in Ahoada East, Ahoada West and Emohua Local Government Areas during the presidential election.

Ologbondiyan stated:  “The public already knows how the Minister of Transportation and the Director General of the Buhari Campaign Organisation, Rotimi Amaechi, used soldiers to hold an INEC official hostage, changed the election results and allocated fabricated figures for President Buhari.

“In Akwa-Ibom state, Senator Godswill Akpabio has been using soldiers to suppress and harass the people, in spite of assurances by INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, that the military will not be involved in elections

“In Bayelsa State, soldiers were freely used against the people. In the process the photographer to the State governor was murdered. The Deputy Commissioner of Police in the state was even kidnapped. 

“In Brass, East Senatorial district of the state, it was a war situation as the military took over the electoral process and even declared winners. Soldiers were deployed to the remotest villages where the voters were suppressed and results altered in favour of President Buhari.