Chairman, Ikwerre Local Government Area, Dr. Samuel Nwanosike speaking Tuesday on ARISE Newsday, rebuffed allegations by the All Progressives Congress gubernatorial candidate in Rivers State, Tonye Cole, that the Peoples Democratic Party staged a protest to violently deny the APC access to the state INEC office in Port Harcourt.
He clarified that the motive behind the protest was to drive home their (PDP) demand for a joint inspection of the Certified True Copies of election materials to eliminate suspicion and improve transparency.
Tonye Cole had in an interview on Monday on ARISE News accused the PDP in Rivers state of barricading access to INEC’s office, where he was scheduled to inspect the CTC materials to aid his case against the PDP on grounds of election irregularities.
According to Mr. Cole, ‘I have never been as ashamed of the leadership in Rivers as I am today, our mission to collect our CTC document from INEC in Rivers State was thwarted by PDP thugs mobilized by the state.
“I was beaten, stoned and issued death threats by these thugs who followed us up to the APC secretariat aided and abetted by the Nigerian Police Force.”
This claim was however disputed by Dr. Nwanosike who called the allegations an outright fabrication and not a clear narrative of events.
According to Dr. Nwanosike, Tonye Cole started the violence by slapping the PDP Woman Leader in Rivers State, and ordering his security attachment to open fire on peaceful protesters.
“We were at the protest ground from 6am till about 11:30am dancing and signing, we went to INEC, we addressed them and insisted on not going until INEC does the right thing.
“We are asking for the joint inspection of all electoral materials because of past experiences and we are aware that they (APC) are cooking up results, so for us in Rivers State, we had decided to be vigilantes, our eyes are wide open, we would stay awake to make sure this results that are being given by the people of Rivers State is well protected, no amount of blackmail will deter us, even the shooting of our colleague by soldiers and police attached to Tonye Cole will not deter us.
“We are doing everything humanly possible to restrain ourselves from taking to violence because no man has the monopoly of violence.”
Franklin Udosen
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