Soldiers interference in Rivers elections treasonable, says PDP

The Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP, has reacted to reports of confiscation of results of Saturday’s governorship election in Rivers State, describing it as “treasonable”.

The party also demanded the immediate release of the result to avert serious crisis in the state.

Flaying what it called a subversive act by soldiers, “who seized and diverted the results to an army barrack in Port Harcourt, the PDP called on all lovers of democracy to unite against this brazen attack on our democracy by the Presidency and All Progressives Congress, APC.

“Such barefaced assault is only akin to a coup d’état and should not be allowed to stand”.

The opposition party stated this in a statement issued on Sunday by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, saying “Nigerians watched in bewilderment as soldiers, in the company of APC thugs invaded polling units in Rivers state, unleashed violence on voters, disrupted polling processes and hauled away electoral materials, just because the APC is not in the ballot, following its self-inflicted exclusion from the election.

“The use of soldiers to ambush the electoral process and confiscate results is an extreme scheme by the APC and the Presidency to enmesh the Rivers state governorship election in controversy, seeing that there is no way they can take away victory from the PDP.

“Soldiers, allegedly under the directive of the Director-General of the Buhari Campaign Organization and Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, invaded the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC offices, waylaid INEC officials and forcefully took away collated results to the army barracks, where APC agents have been stationed to alter figures and destroy evidences of PDP’s victory.

“We want Nigerians to note that the APC is frustrated that it is not in the ballot in the Rivers state election and for that, it has resorted to violence, killings and heavy militarization of the area, in the attempt to disrupt the electoral process, seeing that the PDP had already won.

“What the APC and its compromised soldiers fail to note is that the PDP already has valid documents of all the results as delivered from all the polling units where elections held across the state and that the figures are with all the stakeholders.

“Therefore, deploying soldiers to confiscate the results will not change the victory already recorded by our party in Rivers state.”