A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic says thugs of the opposition party prevent supporters of his party who fled during the presidential elections to return

MORE than 2000 members of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, who fled because of the violence in Nembe Bassambiri, Bayelsa State on the eve of the Presidential election were being prevented from returning to their homes, Moses Cleopas, the chairman of the party, said on Sunday, March 3.

He, therefore, called on the federal government and the relevant security agencies to intervene in the tense security situation in Nembe Bassambiri where thugs backed by soldiers attacked PDP members to cart away election materials to Dairus Hotel for thumb-printing.

The PDP state chairman called on the Nigerian Army High Command to deploy a fresh set of soldiers to Nembe and Brass Local Government Areas insisting that the current set of soldiers had been compromised to tarnish the image of the establishment by aiding criminality and electoral violence in Bayelsa.

Cleopas expressed shock at the fact that the Army had not been able to arrest any of the alleged APC thugs who have been shooting and harassing innocent people in Nembe Bassambiri.

He said it was rather shocking that the men of the Nigeria Army had commenced a process of harassing innocent members of the PDP with a view to perpetrating low voters turn out to the detriment of the party in the area.

According to him, soldiers were sighted discussing with an APC thug who led people to break into the residence of Kuroghofa Walter Benwari, a PDP stakeholder in the area, and former commissioner for Special Duty, and later Water Resources.

He called on the security agencies to ensure that the PDP members who fled Bassambiri during the attack by thugs aided by soldiers in Nembe Bassambiri are allowed to their residences without harassment.

However, the PDP chairman commended the leadership of the Nigerian Police for the bold decision to arrest the masterminds of the abduction of Kola Okunola, the deputy commissioner of Police in charge of Federal Special Anti Robbery Squad, during the last election.

He called for immediate prosecution of the people that abducted Okunola and almost beheaded him before he was rescued by the whiskers for refusing to accept to manipulate result in favour òf Sunny Goli and his thugs.

Cleopas stressed that only such a step would restore the people’s confidence in the security agencies whose image is badly scathed by the events of the last election.

– Mar. 4, 2019 @ 13:15 GMT |