Rivers State governor, Nyesom Ezenwo Wike has called on the international community to continue to mount pressure on the APC-led Federal Government and INEC to conduct credible and peaceful elections across the country, including his state.
In a statement personally issued by Governor Wike on the postponed elections on Saturday night, he said that the original plan of the Federal Government was to isolate Rivers and truncate the elections in the state.
His words: “We very much appreciate the international community and the various country missions, whose spontaneous outrage truncated their original plan to isolate and prevent Rivers State from participating in the general elections with all the other states of the country.
“In the circumstance, I wish to call on the international community and especially our partners in the free democratic world, including the United States, the European Union, France and the United Kingdom not to abandon the people of Nigeria and to continue to put effective pressure on the Federal Government to allow the rescheduled general elections to peacefully hold in Rivers State on the new dates they have fixed”.
Wike said that the Federal Government pressured INEC to stagger elections across the country, targeting specific states for postponement.
“Contrary to the excuses being fed on the public, we heard on good authority that the chairman of INEC was unduly pressured by the APC-led Federal Government to postpone the general elections.
“Sensing correctly that it was going to lose the general elections if held on the 16th of February 2019, the APC-led Federal Government ordered INEC to set in motion the process to stagger the general elections by withholding elections in Rivers and other strategic states like Akwa Ibom, Lagos and Kwara states to some other dates. “The resistance by the Chairman of INEC and the international observers to that evil directive and the ensuing confusion effectively clogged INEC’s preparations, especially in the timely distribution of election materials to local government areas across the country.
“For instance, here in Rivers State, the APC-led Federal Government deliberately refused to allow the election materials already in the custody of the Central Bank to be distributed to any of the 23 Local Government Areas on the blind excuse that some misguided APC members were demonstrating at the state’s INEC office.
“It is relevant to mention that there was no rational connection between the demonstrations by the APC hired thugs and the overarching national interest to deploy election materials to the local government areas in preparation for the Saturday elections,” he said.
Governor Wike informed that despite the arrival of sensitive electoral materials in the state, certain security agencies frustrated distribution before the postponement.