Wike accuses APC governors, politicians of sponsoring violence in Rivers

Police parade five for electoral offences, recover arms
Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike has accused All Progressives Congress (APC) governors and politicians of perpetrating violence across the state during the December 10 rerun elections.

The governor said that the violence unleashed and theft of mandate of a few constituencies by security agencies were allegedly bankrolled by the governors of four APC states, who donated N1billion each.

Wike, in a state broadcast yesterday, Governor said: “If Rivers people could be visited with such a despicably high degree of violence to rescue the dying political fortunes of the APC in a mere legislative re-run elections, then we can now begin to imagine what is likely to happen in in 2019.”

He sympathised with the families of those who lost their lives in the course of the rerun elections, praying God to grant them the strength to bear their loss.

In a related development, the Nigeria Police yesterday paraded five persons for committing various electoral offences during the poll.

Also, an undisclosed number of security operatives are in the police net over professional misconduct.

The Force Public Relations Officer Don Awunah while briefing the press said four of the suspects, Dike Deinpiribo, Valentine Alalibo, Onwunari J. Warmate, Iloke Stephen, said to be well known cultists and political thugs, claimed their services were engaged by one lawmaker, Boma GoodHead, who procured two AK47 rifles and commissioned his driver, one Iryo to convey the weapons in his black Toyota Prado and handed them to the suspects at Degem.

The police spokesman said they were arrested within the precinct where a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) was gruesomely murdered by armed political thugs.

According to Awunah the suspects were responsible for several armed attacks that took place during the elections in places like Abonnema, Emuoha, Elele, Eteche and Omoku, where a police officer was gruesomely killed. The rifles and 112 rounds of ammunition were recovered from them. Other members of the killer gang fled and detectives are on their trail.

The fifth suspect, Noble Nwaerema, a 33-year old male was arrested on the day of the election by operatives of the State Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), where he claimed “he was hired by the youth president of Itu-Ikwerre community together with eight (8) others, imported from a neighbouring state.”