The Rivers State chapter of All Progressives Congress, APC, has said that the attack on its campaign rally in Okrika by yet-to-be identified gunmen on February 17, 2015, was aimed at eliminating its governorship candidate, Dr. Dakuku Peterside.
The APC explained that the state would have been engulfed in crisis, which would have been difficult to resolve had the gunmen succeeded in hitting their target.
A statement signed by the Senior Special Adviser to the State Chairman of the party, Chief Chukwuemeka Eze, indicated that the APC had compiled the ‘sins’ of the state chapter of Peoples Democratic Party in readiness to petition the United Nations over its (APC) challenges in the state.
“If they (unidentified gunmen) had succeeded, these enemies of our democracy would have pushed the state into an unprecedented crisis; the end of which no one could have predicted”, the party said.
The State Deputy Chairman of the APC, Prince Peter Odika, who is the Chairman of the investigation committee on the political violence against the party, said the panel found the PDP culpable of the ugly trend in the state.
Odika, who submitted the committee’s report to the State APC Chairman, Dr. Davies Ikanya, at the party’s secretariat in Port Harcourt, Monday, said the team was able to list 150 sins committed against APC by the PDP ahead of the 2015 elections.
“These sins revolve around attacks against APC faithful, billboards, and LG secretariats by the misguided PDP elements in Rivers State ahead of the March/April 2015 general elections”, Odika said.
He appealed that the report should be treated with the urgency it deserved before the state was plunged into a needless crisis that could kill APC members and supporters and truncate the nation’s nascent democracy.
Odika disclosed that at the top of the list was the violent disruption of APC’s campaign rally in Okrika, which resulted in the death of a police corporal.
Receiving the report, the state APC chairman congratulated Odika and his committee for a job well done. He assured them that the aim of setting up the committee would be actualized and insisted that the report would be sent to the United Nations, Amnesty International, ECOWAS and other major international bodies without delay.
He said, “I commend the Inspector General of Police, Suleiman Abba, for directing that the Okrika attempt on our lives should be investigated. We wish that those behind this devilish attack are promptly arrested; if not our lives will not be safe anymore.
“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”.