Amaechi: Sekibo, Omehia hired Calabar police to rig governorship polls

Rivers governorship candidate of the ACN, Dr Abiye Sekibo and his counterpart in APGA, former governor, Celestine Omehia, have drawn up plans to unleash violence during the upcoming governorship elections, including the use of some hired plain clothes policemen from Calabar meant to attack a particular area, Governor Rotimi Amaechi has alleged.

Sekibo had in an earlier interview also alleged that Amaechi and top government officials had, during the national assembly elections, directed their personal security details to attack ACN supporters which paved way for the PDP to massively rig the elections in Rivers State.

But the governor who spoke through his chief of staff and director general of his re-election campaign organisation, Chief Ezebunwo Nyesom Wike, noted that the two governorship candidates held separate meetings on 15th and 17th April, 2011 at their residences during which plans were hatched to attack some key members of the PDP in nine local government areas and to deploy mercenaries to violently rig the governorship elections.

Amaechi said Omehia has gone as far as recruiting the service of some policemen under zone 6, Calabar who are to attack Rumuigbo in Obio/Akpor local government during the elections on 26 April, 2011.

He said the government has alerted security agencies while it will take measures to use its might and resources within the law to resist the two governorship candidates. The governor also said that a petition has been filed with the police authorities especially with regard the Calabar policemen recruited.

The state government said in a state-wide announcement yesterday that Sekibo and Omehia “have spent sleepless nights in the studio trying to cut and join clips of speeches and pronouncements of Governor Amaechi, made at different occasions, on different days, into a jingle, that would ultimately give the impression as if the speech was made at a particular forum, that the governor has promised war if not re-elected in Tuesday’s governorship election in the state” noting that the aim is to smear the governor’s image and those of his close aides.

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