The Rivers State Governor, Chief Nyesom Wike has declared that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has concluded plans to print illegal gubernatorial ballot papers for Rivers, Delta and Akwa Ibom States that will exclude certain newly registered political parties as a premise for the nullification of the elections of the three states.
\nSpeaking when he received a letter of nomination as \u201cIndependent Newspapers Political Icon of the Year 2017\u201d, Wike said that credible intelligence available to the Rivers State Government indicates that the indiscriminate registration of new political parties by INEC was aimed at advancing its grand design to rig the elections.
\nHe said: \u201cAll the mass registration of new political parties is a deliberate plan by INEC to manipulate elections in three states.
\n\u201cRivers State, Akwa Ibom and Delta states have been earmarked for the printing of ballot papers where some newly registered political parties will be excluded as a ground for the nullification of the elections by the tribunal.
\n\u201cAfter the nullification by the tribunal as planned, EFCC will be used by the APC-led Federal Government to arrest the three governors, so that they will not be around during the repeat elections.\u201d
\nThe governor said that the second strategy of the APC-led Federal Government was to use security agencies to unleash vicious violence on the day of the governorship elections in the three states to facilitate cancellation of results by INEC.
\nHe noted that the entire struggle to hold the Presidential election ahead of other elections was one of the schemes at rigging the polls.
\nWike said that the APC-led Federal Government has performed woefully; hence they have nothing on ground to campaign with, except to use INEC and security agencies to rig.
\n\u201cAPC is not a political party in the true sense of the word. It is a congregation of people who did not want former President Goodluck Jonathan to continue in office for personal reasons.
\n\u201cThe fight against Jonathan was not in the interest of Nigeria. They have realised their mistakes, but they lack the courage to apologise because of their ego. If you move around, you will see that things are bad\u201d, Wike said.
\nThe governor urged journalists to take up the responsibility of explaining to Nigerians the need to elect a credible Federal Government in 2019.
\nEarlier, the Managing Director of Independent Newspaper, Mr Ade Adigun had said that the newspaper nominated the governor as the Political Icon of the Year 2017 because of his commitment to the development of true democracy.
\nAdigun commended Wike for his contributions to the revival of the Peoples Development Party (PDP) as a viable opposition in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Rivers State Governor, Chief Nyesom Wike has declared that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has concluded plans to print illegal gubernatorial ballot papers for Rivers, Delta and Akwa Ibom States that will exclude certain newly registered political parties as a premise for the nullification of the elections of the three states. Speaking when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":169425,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-front-pix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=169421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/169425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=169421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=169421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=169421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}