There is palpable tension in Rivers State as local government and councillorship elections hold in the state today. 1, 500 security personnel have been deployed to the state to maintain peace and order during the exercise. Haunted by the mindless killing of innocent citizens in previous elections, and following accusation and counter accusation between the ruling party in the state, The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the opposition, the All Progressives Congress, in the build up to today’s elections, some residents who spoke with The Nation feared the elections might be greeted by widespread violence and bloodshed. Consequently, some of the respondents said they would rather stay indoors than risk their lives going to cast their vote. A trader in Mile One Market in Diobu, Port Harcourt, Uchenna Okechukwu, said that with the politically-motivated killing of innocent persons during the 2015 general elections and subsequent reruns in the state, he would not vote.
“I will not risk my life going to vote. This is also the view of many residents and this might lead to a low turnout during the exercise. For me, the deployment of security personnel will not stop violence. I would rather stay indoors that allow politicians waste my life.” A taxi driver in Rumuola, Port Harcourt, James Uchendu, disclosed that he almost lost his life during the 2015 elections and reruns in the state, because of the desperation of some politicians, who prevented him and many others from voting. “After preventing us from voting, I was shocked how they came up with bogus figures later announced as results of the polls.” Another respondent said: “It will take divine intervention for today’s elections not to end in violence. Everything about it indicates that there would be crisis and to avoid being caught in cross fire, the best to do is to stay away.”
The state governor, Nyesom Wike, had accused the APC and its leaders in the state of planning to cause mayhem and disrupt the elections in Abua/Odual, Akuku-Toru, Asari-Toru, Degema, Emohua, Ikwerre, Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni, Opobo/Nkoro, and Tai LGAs of the state. Wike also accused the three leaders of the main opposition APC of recruiting and arming political thugs with guns to be deployed to create an atmosphere of insecurity in the mentioned councils and other LGAs of the state to scare voters to shun the polling stations. But the APC in the state, through its Publicity Secretary, Chief Chris Finebone, however, declared that Wike merely labelled angry PDP members threatening the polls as APC members, since members of the party (APC) would not participate in the elections, in view of the cases in court, over Wike’s 2015 sack of the dulyelected LG chairmen and councilors. It noted that the target of the Rivers governor was to frame up PDP members who might have agreed to vote out his candidates, who were imposed on their party against popular opinion of their members. The Rivers APC insisted that Flag-Amachree and Chindah were in Abuja and Lagos respectively, while Ngofa was in faraway Netherlands as the Nigerian Ambassador, while accusing Wike of not knowing the difference between political propaganda and “outright white lies unbefitting of the high office of a governor.”