2023 polls: Rivers people won’t succumb to intimidation – Wali

   …. Says PDP government under Wike, a complete failure

Amidst the mindless attacks on opposition parties in Rivers state with the 2023 elections around the corner, a peace, social justice and good governance crusader, Kingsley Wenenda Wali, has said that no amount of intimidation by the government of the day in Rivers State will stop the people from coming out en masse to vote out the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) come March 11.

Wali, a stalwart of All Progressives Congress (APC) and convener of Unity House Foundation, UHF, stated this in an interview while expressing great concern over the level of violence being unleashed on members of the opposition parties and supporters of the PDP presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who has been at loggerhead with Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State.

He wondered how the attacks on the opposition members were being masterminded and executed with the security agencies doing virtually nothing to checkmate the situation by arresting the perpetrators and making them face the wrath of the law.

His words: “What I am saying is that those who are visiting the opposition parties in Rivers State with violence, are doing it because they know that the President’s men will not do anything. And when I say the President’s men, I’m talking about the security agencies that are answerable only to the President. They will not do anything. There was a bomb blast somewhere in Port Harcourt the Police Commissioner said they were not aware of it. APC was attacked at Opobo, nothing was done about it. Magnus Abe (Rivers State SDP Governorship candidate) was attacked. The police commissioner did nothing. Nobody was arrested. Nobody was questioned.

“Just recently, APC was supposed to hold a rally. They prepared the place and put everything in place and set the stage with music equipment. People went there in the presence of the Nigerian Police Force and destroyed everything there. It happened in Omuma Local Government Area. The police did not make any statement. The DSS has not said anything about it. And these are the two agencies that are supposed to be directly involved in the electoral process. If all of these are happening and nobody is doing anything about it. Now what would happen on Election Day?”

He added that “Just last week or thereabout, a group of Atiku’s supporters, mostly women, were arrested, arraigned in the magistrate court, charged for cultism and remanded in prison custody. They call it cultism. Women! People’s wives. You can imagine the level of intimidation.”

Noting that the Rivers APC gubernatorial candidate, Tonye Cole, was better positioned to transform the state and make life better for the people, Wali remarked: “The ordinary people of Rivers State are sick and tired of the nonsense they have had to put up with for over seven and a half years (under Gov. Nyesom Wike). This is why despite the deliberate and intentional attempt by the governor and his faction of PDP in Rivers, to stop people, the people have remained determined to push on. Rivers people are fed up with the naked dance in the marketplace. And they want to put a stop to it. They feel the time has come to put a stop to this nonsense. What are they doing? They are coming out in their numbers to encourage us to say that we are with you. That was exactly what happened in Omuma. If you see the way people were trooping out from their houses despite the shooting all over the whole place to scare people from coming out to welcome the APC campaign team. So we have a candidate who is encouraging the people, connecting with the people and feeling the people. And the people are feeling him because they know that this person (Tonye Cole) is about them.

“They have threatened owners of event centres that if any party holds a meeting in their premises they will seal it. And they have done so. And you begin to ask yourself, what were they expecting? That we are going to sit down, fold our arms and watch. No! There comes a time in a man’s life when he says no to nonsense. You’ve pushed Rivers people to the wall and Rivers people are fighting back. We are fighting for Rivers people. We are by them, they are with us. I believe that at the end of the day justice and victory will be ours.”

Describing Wike’s government as a failure, the UHF boss said the people of Rivers State have not felt the real impact of governance for over seven and a half years that the governor has been in the saddle.