A chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, Eze Chukwuemeka Eze, has hailed the people of Rivers State for boycotting what he described as a sham Local Government Area election last Saturday.
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Eze expressed a strong belief that the election results will be overturned by the court. He argued that the election was overseen by a team that was unlawfully appointed by the Sole Administrator, Ibok-Ette Ibas.
In a statement released on Thursday, Eze noted that the response from the people of Rivers, across all 23 Local Government Areas, represents a clear rejection of what he termed political illegality.
He pointed out that there were only 23 candidates for the chairmanship positions in the local government areas, all of whom are supporters of the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike. Furthermore, Eze found it alarming to discover that result sheets from all the polling units in the state were allegedly seized and kept in a private hotel in Port Harcourt, where the figures were manipulated.
He counseled the public to disregard what he described as “the cooked-up trash being circulated as a result of the Local Government Councils election, as there was no election in Rivers State but allocation of votes to Wike’s cronies.”
“It is pathetic to learn that in Emohua, Ikwerre, Obio-Akpor, Port Harcourt City and other local government areas where voters shunned the charade, the results churned out by the electoral body manned by this unlawful team led by the man from Cross River indicate that the 23 chairmanship contestants scored votes in tens and hundreds of thousands.
“In Emohua Local Government Area, RSIEC ad-hoc staff were seen thumb-printing the entire ballot papers for the APC because not even a single voter turned up at the polling units, yet a factional APC chairmanship candidate, Chidi Lloyd, was declared winner with over a hundred thousand votes.
“For an uncontested election to be this manipulated, it clearly shows that Wike has never won any election in his political life.
“The FCT Minister lost his polling unit to the Labour Party during the 2023 presidential election. He could not deliver Tinubu. But on getting to the collation centre, the entire results were changed,” Eze alleged.
