Last Saturday’s presidential and National Assembly elections in River State were marred by irregularities, according to eyewitnesses. Correspondent BISI OLANIYI, who monitored the elections in Port Harcourt, the state capital catalogued some of the malpractices that marred the exercise.
Though the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, had assured Nigerians that the general elections throughout the country would be free, fair, transparent, credible and peaceful, the reverse was the case in Rivers State.
It became apparent that the presidential and the National Assembly elections would be rigged in Rivers State in the evening of February 27, when it was confirmed that the original result sheets had been released to the leaders of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state.
With the original result sheets with PDP leaders, colour photocopies were released by INEC to the Electoral Officers, who in-turn gave them to the Supervisory Presiding Officers (SPOs), for onward distribution to the Presiding Officers throughout the 23 local government areas.
In a few places where elections took place in the state, the fake result sheets were used to deceive the electorate, who queued endlessly in the scorching sun, while the presiding officers mostly displayed ignorance by not removing the protective film on the lens of the smart card readers, which caused delay, before the supervising presiding officers came to their rescue.
The Rivers governorship candidate of the PDP, Chief Nyesom Wike, a former Minister of State for Education, was so sure of “victory” at the polls, not through the ballots, but through massive rigging and writing of results in the homes of the leaders of his party.
Wike was also supported in the senseless rigging by the Rivers Deputy Governor, Tele Ikuru, who last week, defected from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to the PDP, and other leaders of the party.
The wife of President Goodluck Jonathan, Dame Patience, an indigene of Okrika in Rivers State, after voting with her husband in his Otuoke hometown, Bayelsa State, relocated to her palatial mansion in the old Government Reservation Area (GRA) in Port Harcourt, to coordinate the rigging.
The First Lady (Dame Jonathan) and Wike, who are of the PDP, were giving instructions to the police and INEC officials to ensure “landslide victory” for President Jonathan. The police chiefs and INEC officials were helpless, considering the threats of losing their jobs and huge cash released to them.
It was alleged that each of the Electoral Officers (EOs) in the 23 local governments were given N15 million to compromise the election and ensure “victory” for candidates of the PDP. Some of the EOs confronted neither confirmed nor denied the allegation.
It was when Governor Rotimi Amaechi, who is also the Director-General of Buhari/Osinbajo Campaign Organisation, got to his polling unit in Ubima, his hometown in Ikwerre Local Government Area for accreditation that the charade was exposed. Governor Amaechi insisted on seeing the result sheet, but the presiding officer could not produce it, he refused to be accredited.
The governor returned home and gave the INEC ad hoc staff little time, presumably for the officials to bring the result sheet. But, the result sheet was still not available when he returned to the unit before the end of accreditation at 1 p.m.
The Rivers Commissioner for Information and Communications, Mrs. Ibim Semenitari, said reports from other parts of the state showed that the problem of absence of result sheets was widespread.
Similarly, the Rivers governorship candidate of the APC, Dr. Dakuku Peterside, equally refused to vote in his coastal Opobo hometown for the same reason: the absence of result sheets.
While responding to allegations of the hijack of result sheets later, Wike urged Rivers people to ignore Amaechi and other APC leaders, insisting that the elections took place and that it was free and fair. He wondered why his former boss (Amaechi) would get to his polling unit and be asking for result sheet, instead of getting himself accredited in the interim before the arrival of the result sheet.
Last Saturday’s elections in the state were marred by violence, killing of scores of defenceless voters, massive rigging, snatching of ballot boxes, intimidation of voters and many irregularities. The INEC officials and policemen connived with PDP leaders in the rape of democracy.
For instance, eyewitnesses said policemen and PDP thugs who were recruited as INEC ad hoc staff were openly thumb-printing ballot papers at the Divisional Police headquarters in Kpor-Ogoni, Gokana Local Government headquarters. The representative of Rivers Southeast Senatorial District, Magnus Abe, who is seeking re-election, and the Caretaker Chairman of Gokana Local Government Council, Kadilo Kabari, who were at the police station to lodge complaints about the irregularities, were shocked to see policemen and PDP thugs thumb-printing ballot papers.
Abe and Kabari were attacked by the PDP thugs, with the Gokana council boss given the beating of his life, thereby sustaining injuries and later made to sit on bare floor for so long, before he was allowed to leave and landed in the hospital. His nasty experience was one of the numerous cases in Rivers State.
An elderly voter, who is a devout Christian, in the old Port Harcourt Township, popularly called Town, had an unpleasant experience that day. Just because he decided to vote for all the candidates of the APC, the peeping PDP thugs dragged him away and gave him the beating of his life. They only left him when he collapsed and he almost died. The thugs had seen that he placed his thumbprint beside the APC logo.
At another polling unit in Rumuigbo-Port Harcourt, near the Psychiatric Hospital, the PDP thugs were reported to have taken over the voting centres. Eyewitnesses said policemen on election duty were helpless. A decent and well-educated man came to the polling unit to vote for all APC candidates, but the thugs collected his ballot papers and tore them to pieces. They had also observed that he voted for the APC. The gentleman simply walked away.
An election observer from the Transitional Monitoring Group (TMG), Ibrahim Zikrullah, said: “We have Rivers State, where the election did not meet minimal standards of any recognised election. The state security took over the role of INEC. They were beating up people, smashing ballots and falsifying results.
“The problems with the card readers did not help matters, because in some places they could not verify the Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs). And in our view, the manual verification compromised the purpose of the card reader.”
To show their displeasure over the breaches observed during the election, thousands of APC members took to the streets in Port Harcourt. They took off from the Government House and later got to the headquarters of INEC on the Port Harcourt-Aba-Enugu Expressway, near the corporate headquarters of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
The protesters called for fresh elections in Rivers and the removal of the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Dame Gesila Khan, for taking sides with the leaders of the PDP. Khan, an indigene of Bayelsa State, as President Goodluck Jonathan, was described as an associate of the President.
The REC was also accused of releasing the original result sheets to Wike and other leaders of the party, with colour photocopies given to the electoral officers in 23 local governments across the state, which they used to write fake results, while Wike later submitted to INEC for collation, the “manufactured” results on original result sheets.
Khan, however, said: “It is a lie and cheap blackmail. It is not possible to hand over original result sheets to politicians, especially with the security numbers on them. They should concentrate on campaigning and allow me to do my job.”
Among the APC’s protesters were: Dr. Peterside; his running mate, Okorie Asita; Sen. Abe; Chief Tony Okocha; Rivers commissioners; federal and state lawmakers, among other eminent personalities. The determined protesters ignored the heavy security on Aba Road, especially between Waterlines Bus Stop and GRA Junction, thereby moving to the gate of the INEC headquarters.
The protesters, who were armed with placards with various inscriptions, were chanting: “We no go gree.” Some of the placards read: “Change Rivers REC of INEC now, Prof. Jega”, “Electoral officers in Rivers State compromising with PDP”, “INEC in Rivers State is an arm of PDP”, “PDP members accredited as INEC ad hoc staff” and “Rivers INEC, where are our votes?”
Peterside and some leaders of the APC, who insisted on entering the INEC headquarters to meet with the REC and formally register their protest, were barred by fully-armed riot policemen. The protesters then decided to sit on the ever-busy Port Harcourt-Aba-Enugu Expressway, in front of INEC’s gate, for about two hours.
The Rivers APC’s governorship candidate said: “What you are seeing here (at INEC headquarters in Port Harcourt) are registered voters, who are supporters of the APC. They are here to protect the fact that yesterday (on Saturday), they were not allowed to exercise their franchise. They got to their various polling units, only to discover that there were no result sheets and without the result sheets, the election cannot be conducted in compliance with the Electoral Law.
“In substance, there were no elections anywhere in Rivers State, at least in 20 local government areas. Apart from the fact that there were no result sheets, the few places where accreditation was done, results were not announced at the polling booths, in accordance with the law. Results were not collated at the various LGAs. We later heard that results are being collated at various homes around the city of Port Harcourt and the suburbs.
“So, we are here to register our protest. There were no elections in Rivers State and violence was visited on our people. Over ten persons died in various locations in Rivers State. Over 55 of our members were arrested by the police and the military. We are calling for elections and not cancellation, because there was no election. All we asking for is that please, can we vote? There are two different things; we are saying there were no elections at all and not that elections were not held.
“We have been here for two hours and they said the REC is not available. Somebody who identified himself as the Administrative Secretary of INEC in Rivers State received our petition, but we are insisting that we must see the REC, because she played a key role in subverting the will of Rivers people.”
Abe, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), who is seeking re-election to represent Rivers Southeast Senatorial District, also stated that he was manhandled in his Bera-Ogoni hometown in Gokana LGA of the state, during Saturday’s election and did not vote, insisting that nobody voted in his senatorial district.
