Rivers Post Election Crisis is Not Abnormal – Wike
The Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike has said the post-election crisis in the state is “nothing that is abnormal”.
Wike stated this in a live media chat in Port Harcourt on Tuesday, noting that the face-off between his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) is to ensure that the PDP is on the safe side.
The APC has claimed that thugs acting on PDP orders attacked it when the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was deploying voting materials for the March 18 governorship election.
Wike stated that PDP was simply being on alert to avoid a recurrence of an incident in the aftermath of the 2015 elections.
For over a week now, the state’s ruling party has been protesting, demanding that INEC only release the voting papers to the APC for scrutiny in the presence of the PDP.
“There is nothing that is abnormal that you think that is going on in Port Harcourt. What PDP is doing is just to be vigilant,” he said.
“Vigilant in the sense that during the 2015 [post-election period] precisely, after the elections, after the nomination, we had problems that we never believed, and so we didn’t want a recurrence of that at the tribunal.”
When the police submitted original results to the tribunal rather than CTCs of the original, the governor claimed that the PDP was startled.
“Everybody was shocked: ‘How would the police tender original results?’ And INEC had their own certified true copies. INEC tendered their own,” he said.
“To our greatest surprise, the court accepted the police’s original results. It was surprising to us, down to the Court of Appeal and we have seen this happen several times. Remember what happened in Imo State.”
Wike added that Rivers PDP needs to be “extra vigilant”. According to him, the PDP must make sure it is receiving everything the other parties are given as each party has a right to the records used to conduct the polls after applying to INEC.
“And we now said to INEC, ‘We will know whether what you’re giving to us is what you’re giving to these parties. Note all the parties and sign for it, so we’ll know that you’re giving exactly the same you have given to these people.’
“But we don’t want what happened last time to reoccur. You can’t have two Michaels at the same time. So, all these things you are hearing that the APC is shouting is because they know that game they played the last time, we will not allow it to happen again,” Wike said.
