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Rivers Crisis: Fubara Swears In LG chairman while Wike Camp heads To Court

PORT HARCOURT: The Rivers State Peoples Democratic Party and the All Progressives Congress factions has on Sunday rejected the conduct and outcome of the local government election held in Rivers state, stating that no local government election was held in the state on Saturday.

.The process was done on Sunday in the Executive Council Chamber of the Government House in Port Harcourt, the state capital, hours after the chairmen were presented certificates of return by the Chairman of the Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission, Adolphus Enebeli.

The Action Peoples Party won 22 of the 23 chairmanship positions in the Saturday council election, which was marred by explosions and gunfire. The Action Alliance candidate won one seat.
In addition, the APP took home 314 of the 319 council seats across the state’s 23 LGAs.

The continuing power struggle between Fubara and his predecessor, Wike, obstructed the exercise.

Fubara’s supporters defected to the APP and won chairmanships in their local government areas when Wike took over the PDP.

Hours after the election winners were sworn in, PDP state publicity secretary Kenneth Yowika vowed that the party will file a lawsuit challenging the way the poll was conducted.

In order to make sure that justice is done and is accepted as having been done, we are making the legal system stronger. Therefore, we neither acknowledge nor accept that any swearing-in took place today (Sunday) or tomorrow (Monday),” he stated.

Yowika said that the state’s governing party had always argued that the Federal High Court’s verdict shouldn’t have applied to the council election’s conduct, citing the unlawfulness of the state government’s actions.

“First of all, everything related to that issue is illegal,” Yowika declared. We’ve stated explicitly that elections

“First of all, everything pertaining to that issue is illegal,” Yowika stated. We said it clearly that elections should not be held, you know, relying on the Federal High Court ruling made by Justice Peter Lifu.

And as I said before, any action done in respect of the local government issue would be fruitless because, as a nation that upholds the rule of law, we ought not to be acting in ways that are illegal.

Read related news: Rivers LG Election: Fubara Set To swear In New chairmen Today

The law had said do things that will be in line with the judgment of the Federal High Court and the Government of the day has not obeyed that.

So, we are a law-abiding party. We are not going to come out physically to begin to fight. We had a protest yesterday (Saturday) clearly showing that there was no election.

And we stand by that decision that we have taken that there was no election, and we wait for the judiciary and other arms of government that should put things in proper perspective to act. We continue to hold on that there was no election.

We visited the Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission yesterday, and it was evident to the entire world that there was no election there,” he continued. Therefore, we maintain the decision of the Federal High Court that the election should not take place.

Well, they carried out whatever pantomime the public saw and the Peoples Democratic Party is opposed to that. As we have stated, we are and will continue to be a law-abiding party.

In a same vein, Chief Tony Okocha’s APC publicity secretary Chibuike Ikenga appealed for compliance to the Federal High Court ruling restraining the state government from conducting the election.

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