SpicyTricks

Q. Were you disappointed at the turn of event in Rivers State?

A. I won't say disappointed. I would rather say sad because Rivers State and Rivers people don't deserve what happened. We and Akwa Ibom and a few in the Southern states, appear to be the black spot in the map of Nigeria. We have appeared to be what will be an embarrassment to the Nigerian march to greater democracy or nation. If you look at the trend in the South-south states, you would agree with me that it looks like we are living in the 18th or 19th century Nigeria while the other parts of Nigeria are living in the 21st century. You can imagine the elections in Rivers; the number of lives that were wasted. People went out to vote, but at the end of the day, they paid with their lives. Should they pay with their lives? In one single day, during the governorship election, we lost 13 people, several persons were injured. There is a chap, this one is recent, the chap was slaughtered, his penis cut off. He was tied to a stone and dumped in a river in Okrika. We are an embarrassment to Nigeria but that is not the trait of the Rivers people.

Q. Are those post-election killings direct fall out of the election?

Obviously. How else do you explain it? Recall that after the election, APC alone had lost about 55 persons as build up to the election and we started raising the alarm. We were screaming; I don't think anybody was listening.  We protested on the streets, we wrote several petitions, we called on the Inspector-General of Police, the Director-General of SSS. We took up advertorial saying we don't think politics should be about electoral violence, we suffered so much intimidation, harassments and threats and none of them…I was thinking to myself, and what kind of legacies are we leaving for the people who would come after us? How would the people outside see us? The world is a small village. Before the election, the signs were obvious that we were heading for a serious danger. The National Human Rights Commission had assessed us and put us among the three most volatile states. The American Embassy in Nigeria identified us as a hot spot to watch. Several others too. The signs were there. We did not do anything about it. And today, we are all going to pay the price for it.

Q. Who do we hold responsible for doing nothing?

The Nigerian state of course; it is their responsibility to take charge of security. We raised alarm but nobody was listening. In one day alone in a village, 15 persons were killed by some hoodlums or thugs and nobody did anything about it.

Q. But some other people raise accusing fingers at all of you in the political class.

I challenge anybody…I can't speak for others but I can speak for myself and my associates and nobody did anything about it. Rivers State has been under unimaginable tension in the last one year as a result of political related violence. Is this what it should be? Do we deserve this as a people? Our people are peace-loving, our people are respectful; they simply asked for an opportunity to exercise their civic rights so as to feel like every other Nigerian. We want to vote and let our votes count. But instead, what they got was intimidation, threat, maiming, killing.

Q. The APC is calling for the cancellation of the result and one seems to wonder if INEC, after declaring someone the winner of the election, could go back to cancel it.

We called for the cancellation of the election on good ground. You have made the use of card readers mandatory and there are rules for the election. On the 11th of April, we noticed that card readers were not used in places where the elections were to hold. We have made enquiries with INEC to know if there was an exception to the use of card readers and it said no. Even on that basis alone, INEC does not need a judicial process to say this directive was flouted. There are also certain things that need to be in place like result sheets and other sensitive materials. In few areas where they decided to conduct something that looks like election, they did not come with result sheets at all. These result sheets got lost in transit between the Electoral Officers and the presiding officers. Almost all the presiding officers said they were not given result sheets and those result sheets never came out even though we found out later that they ended up in different homes. In one case, 105 persons were caught with result sheets thumb-printing and writing results in one local government area while the election was still on. This same local government area, they said they got 97 percent voter turn out there. When we don't keep to the rules of the game, then obviously, we have no game.

Q. Are you surprised with the position of INEC on this?

No, I am not surprised.

Q. At the review of the report of the situation room of the civil society, Professor Attahiru Jega said there was no substantive evidence by the APC for INEC to act upon.

Professor Jega is part of an institution. I know that in clear conscience, Professor Jega knows that what took place in Rivers was not an election at all, but as part of an institution, he has to rely on reports of the various electoral commissioners and the collective report of the commission.

Q. But it seems that all the security assurances were actually given because an Assistant Inspector-General of Police was

deployed, three commissioners of police were deployed, and the SSS must have also done its own. So what actually went wrong?

I tell you three things; the first was that AIG Tunde Ogunsakin, who deployed to Rivers for the purpose of the election, was deployed a night before the election on the orders of the presidency.

Q. He has said he was not withdrawn and that he is in AIG in charge of a zone which includes Rivers and that the operations headquarters of the zone is in Cross River.

I don't know when he told you that but he had sections with us and he told us he was in charge of the election. I am not talking about hearsay, I am saying he called us to a meeting in the office of the commissioner of police in Rivers and said: “I am going to be in charge of this election and I will be here till Monday. That is my mandate. And when he was asked to go back to his base, he put a call through to us and informed us he was asked to return to base. The second thing is: were the three commissioners of police deployed to Rivers in the state a day before the election or after? They were deployed by the Inspector-General of Police but were re-deployed on the orders of the presidency. Who is the presidency? I do not know. I am told that a certain woman instructed that they must leave Rivers State immediately; only the first two of them touched down in Rivers, the third one didn't reach Rivers. They all went back to Abuja or wherever they were coming from.

Q. Would this certain woman be the First Lady who is a native of Rivers State and was reportedly in the state during the election?

If you are talking about the First Lady, I am aware that she came to Port Harcourt the Wednesday before the election and was in Port Harcourt before the elections and personally moved from local government to local government engaging people; what discussion they had I don't know.

Q. The PDP has continued to maintain that the APC was not prepared for the April 11 election in the state and that the APC already saw the trend ahead of March 28 and that this was the reason it was calling for cancellation of the exercise.

Is that not nonsensical? Does it show that whoever said it has any intelligence in his head? If they say the APC saw the trend, it means they were talking about maximum violence visited on the people of the state on March 28 and having seen that, the APC said we can't stand that level of violence. Now, when they say the APC was not prepared for the election, is it that we didn't have our agents or that the people were not there to vote or that we do not have our Permanent Voters Cards? We were ready for the elections, ready to cast our votes, not lose our lives.

Q. Some people have said the election was not a vote of rejection against you as candidate of the APC, but against Governor Rotimi Amaechi for his act of betrayal.

That again shows how hollow those who advance that course are. Governor Rotimi Amaechi was not on the ballot; I was on the ballot. Again, elections having been concluded, there is no action we can take that will reverse the outcome of the election. If you talk about vote of no confidence, then on what? If you go by their calculation, President Jonathan and his party won Rivers by 90 percent. What it means is that the Rivers people did not betray President Jonathan who is not from Rivers but from Bayelsa.  If others did not vote for “our son”, how would you take that out on the members of the APC and Dr Dakuku Peterside? There is no way you can justify the massive fraud.

Q. The tribunal is your next port of call.

Why are you putting words in my mouth. I am a party man and I am engaging with the party leadership on the next line of action.

Nyesom Wike, the Rivers state governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was announced winner of the election on April 13, Monday. He scored 1,029,102 votes, while Dakuku, the APC candidate, got 124,896 votes.