The campaign outfit of Dakuku Peterside, the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), known as the Greater Together Campaign Organisation, (GTCO), has accused the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of attempting to thwart justice in the Rivers State election tribunal.
GTCO said in a statement in Port Harcourt that PDP and INEC, sponsored some persons to the Court of Appeal in Port Harcourt, where they allegedly deposed to an Affidavit claiming that the Card Reader machines allotted to Rivers State for the April 11 Governorship/House of Assembly elections were stolen by hoodlums. “We not only condemn this resort to judicial cloning, but insist that INEC and PDP have no hiding place from the arm of justice, no matter how they twist and twine facts,” it stated.
The statement was signed by the Director of Communications GTCO, Ibim Semenitari. The Dakuku Peterside campaign outfit wondered why INEC has fallen to this depraved state. “The attempt to hide under the judicial certification by the Court of Appeal in securing an Affidavit to strengthen their fraud of April 11 cannot excuse the law of compulsory use of Card Reader machines for the elections. “INEC had declared that for the purpose of the April 11 elections, where Card Readers failed to function or unavailable, polls should be shifted to the next day, or in extreme case, be called off. INEC and PDP’s attempt to stand this declaration on its head has no locus standi,” Semenitari asserted. “We are aware that INEC and PDP have built an evil marriage, but we also know that justice has its own way of exposing falsehood and punishing the wicked,” Semenitari added.
The GTCO Communications Director drew the attention of the public to INEC’s refusal to oblige APC access to election materials as factual indicator of the fact that the commission never conducted any election in Rivers State.
“Faced with the fact that what it declared as results of those elections are flying in the face, and cannot withstand elementary scrutiny, INEC, in criminal bondage and collaboration with PDP, wants to drag a respected institution as the Court of Appeal, into its moral abyss.
We consider this act too insane to contemplate, and warn PDP and its crop of compromised fellows in INEC that they can only run but cannot hide,” she said.
She was emphatic that “a million Affidavits cannot reverse the fact that INEC has no cogent proof it conducted elections in Rivers State on April 11; either would another million Affidavits prove that the so-called results it declared are nothing better than a Toronto certificate.”
By Pita Ochai
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