The Rivers State Governor, Rt Hon. Chibuike Amaechi, has accused the wife of the President, Mrs. Patience Jonathan, of pressurising the Independent National Electoral Commission and security agencies to rig the governorship election in the state.
The governor’s accusation is coming barely 48 hours to the governorship and House of Assembly elections across the country.
Amaechi, who observed that President Goodluck Jonathan’s wife was in Okrika, her home town, for the governorship election, hoped that there would not be a repeat of election malpractices in the state.
The governor, who spoke during a stakeholders’ meeting yesterday in Port Harcourt, said the Resident Electoral Commissioner in the state, Mrs. Gesila Khan, already had a mindset of delivering the state to the Peoples Democratic Party.
He warned that the governorship candidate of the PDP, Chief NyesomWike, must answer for the killings in Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni Local Government Area.
Amaechi insisted that INEC must make available original result sheets at all polling units and called on the people of the state not to allow election to hold without result sheets.
He said, “The reason for this meeting is to let you know that what happened on the March 28, 2015 may or may not repeat itself. Few days ago, I had said it would not repeat itself. But as of this morning, there are enormous pressure on the security by the wife of the President.
“There is also enormous pressure on INEC by the wife of the President. I hope that they will not repeat the hijacking of results. In most of the local government areas, if not all, there were no result sheets. This time around, I hope they will bring the result sheets to the different units. I hope they will not forget the result sheets at the collation centre.
“For me as the Governor of Rivers State, what is material to me is that we want to see the result sheets. We want to ensure that as we vote, our votes will count. Most of you have been asking this question: who will take over from me? I told you that we don’t want anybody to force a candidate on us.
“We don’t want people to be made governor because they want to share our resources. That is not what we want. We want to be allowed to vote and let our votes be counted. Let the wife of the President stay in her house. She should not force a candidate on us.
“They should tell her that security agencies have assured us that they will allow votes to count. I assure you that the security agencies will not be biased and I hope that the security agencies will keep to that. I hope that the woman posted here as the Resident Electoral Commission will know that her responsibility is not to disallow anybody from seeing the result sheets.”
Calling on the electorate not to allow anybody to intimidate them, Amaechi explained that communities should use the Ubima (his community) formula by locking down their villages to ensure that nobody would steal their votes.
He warned that INEC should not endanger the lives of its staff by deliberately withholding the results sheets or failing to do what was expected of them according to the law.