Okrika Shooting: ‘PDP Planned To Kill Peterside’ …Allegation Baseless -PDP

The committee set up by the Rivers State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to investigate increasing cases of electoral violence in the state has indicted the rival Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Submitting the committee’s report to Rivers State APC Chairman, Dr. Davies Ibiamu Ikanya, on Monday at the party’s state Secretariat in Port Harcourt, its Chairman, Prince Peter Odika, said the committee was able to list 150 sins committed against APC by PDP leadership and members in the course of the ongoing campaign for the 2015 elections. The report included an alleged plot to kill the party’s governorship candidate, Dr Dakuku Adol Peterside.
“These sins revolve around attacks against APC faithful, billboards, and LG secretariat by the misguided PDP elements in Rivers State ahead of the March/April 2015 general elections,” Odika, who is the Rivers State APC deputy chairman, said.
He pleaded that the report should be treated with the urgency it deserves before PDP engulfs the state into crisis that will not only send more APC members and other innocent persons to their earlier graves but also truncate the country’s nascent democracy.
Odika disclosed that at the top of the list is the violent disruption of APC’s campaign rally in Okrika last Wednesday, which culminated in the death of a policeman.
He alleged that the attack was principally targeted to eliminate the party’s gubernatorial candidate, Dr. Dakuku Peterside.
“If they had succeeded, these enemies of our democracy would have engulfed the state in an unprecedented crisis the end of which no one could have predicted,” he said.
Receiving the report, Ikanya congratulated Odika and his committee for a job well done.
He assured them that the aim of setting up the committee would be actualised as the report would be sent to the United Nations, Amnesty International, ECOWAS and other major international bodies without delay.
“I commend the Inspector General of Police, Suleiman Abba, for directing that the attempts on our lives in Okrika should be investigated. We wish that those behind this devilish attack are promptly arrested; if not our lives will not be safe anymore,” Ikanya said.
Looking ahead to the elections, the party chairman said: “To the people of Rivers State, the choice of stopping further promotion of violence lies in their hands by ensuring that all the candidates fielded by PDP in Rivers State are voted against to punish them for making our state a mockery before the international community.
“The choice before them is to choose between darkness and light, devil and God, between occult forces and Christianity, between democracy and anti-democracy forces. The choice is ours to make,” he stated.
Ikanya appealed to the international community to come to the party’s aid, saying: “We can no longer fold our arms and watch while we are being viciously attacked and slaughtered by people whose mission and vision in politics is to spread violence as their own way of grabbing power, having seen that they have been overwhelmingly rejected by the electorate.
“What makes the situation more pathetic is that security agencies in Rivers State, including the police and the Department of State Security (DSS), have failed to make any arrest or call the PDP leadership to order simply because they are controlled by the PDP-led Federal Government, which is desperate to take over Rivers State at all cost.”
The fact-finding committee inaugurated on 19th January, 2015 had Deputy Chairman of Rivers APC, Prince Peter Odika, as chairman; the Rivers State APC Youth Leader, Barr. Sogbeye Eli, as secretary.
Other members were Secretary of Rivers State APC, Chief Emeka Bekee; Women Leader, Evangelist Carol Nagbo; Chief Eze Chukwuemeka Eze; Okrika Chairman of APC, Hon. Israel Asiamaka; Andoni APC Chairman, Chief Victor Ere; former Asaro-Toru Local Government Chairman, Hon. Ojukaya Flag-Amachree; Chief of Staff to the Speaker of Rivers State House of Assembly, Hon. Awongo Ikalama; and Barr. Obinna Chukwu.
Meanwhile, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state has disagreed with the APC on the allegations raised by the committee, and described them as baseless and unfounded.
The Director, Media and Publicity, Rivers PDP governorship campaign organization, Barr Emma Okah, said that in a telephone interview that it was wrong for the APC to claim that it lost 30 persons to political violence in the state.
Okah, who is a former Commissioner for Information in the state, pointed out that some people had died as a result of cult activities and communal clashes, adding that the APC was trivialising death by linking such deaths to political violence.
Explaining that it is not in the character of the PDP to be violent, the party chieftain challenged the APC to show proof that it (PDP) was behind the attacks on its members.
He said, “People who are aggrieved cannot ventilate their anger through due processes. Occasionally, you have cult-related activities; we have conflicts that could have been resolved ordinarily through litigations being resolved by the resort to jungle justice or by people taking laws into their hands.
“It is not in the character of the PDP to resort to violence. The PDP has never even done that to anybody. We challenge them to show evidence. It is not enough that you are showing pictures of dead bodies and all that. I am saying that if today, you kill a PDP person for example, the PDP would take steps to alert the police and it is left for the police to investigate.
“Why is APC insisting that the PDP is responsible for the death of its (APC) members? So, what it (APC) is saying is that wherever a death occurs and that death is a violent death that touches any APC person, it means that the persons behind it is a PDP person. It doesn’t follow,” he said.
Okah, however, recalled how a staunch PDP member in the state was nearly assassinated, adding that the party (PDP) only called the police to investigate the incident and did not accuse the APC.
“What of those who are cult members and as a result of cult related activities, one of them got killed? What if they are members of APC? Are they also going to be pointing fingers at PDP?
“What of communal crisis? What of land crisis? You know that people can’t go to court athe only option left to people now is to seek self-help at all material times because they will not let the courts open,” he added.

Rivers State Governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Dr Dakuku Peterside chatting with an elderly market woman at Rumukurushi in Port Harcourt, yesterday.