The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has decried the on-going mass arrest and detention of its leaders and members in South South states of Rivers, Delta and Akwa-Ibom states by the Nigerian military ahead of the March 9, 2019 Governorship and States Assembly elections.
A statement signed by the party’s Spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, stated that the All Progressives Congress, APC, was turning the South South zone into a war zone.
The PDP described the arrests as plans by the Buhari Presidency and the APC, out of their desperation, to suppress voters, manipulate the electoral process and forcefully take over control of the states.
According to the statement, leaders of the PDP in Rivers State were being hounded and forcefully picked up in a well-coordinated operation by military operatives attached to the Director General of Buhari’s Campaign Organization and Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi.
“Our party has received reports on how soldiers led by one Major Mustapha Bello from Sokoto Division, under Amaechi’s directives, manhandled, arrested and took away the Rivers State Commissioner for Education, Dr. Tam Gogo Jaja to an unknown destination.”
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He recalled that during the February 23 polls, soldiers, also under the directives of Rotimi Amaechi, invaded the state and engaged in unrestrained harassment of PDP supporters, resulting in the killing of over 30 innocent citizens and that the party had called on Nigerians and the international community to note the development in the South South and how the Buhari Presidency and the APC were provoking the people of the region and pushing them to the precipice.
Ologbondiyan regretted that the tension in the Niger Delta had been dangerously stretched noting that there was a limit to what the people could stomach in the face of such aggression without resort to self-help.
He also noted that the Niger Delta region remained a stronghold of the PDP and that no amount of intimation and assault by the APC would change that reality.
“Our party therefore demands the immediate release of every PDP member arrested by the military as well as instant stoppage of military aggression in the region ahead of the elections.
“Any delay in cessation of this aggression by the APC and the military will destroy the precarious peace in the region and spell doom for our nation.”
