APC accuses Governor Wike of using police to steal election petition documents

The All Progressives Congress in Rivers State has accused security agencies of conniving with Governor Nyesom Wike to rig the March 18 Governorship and State House of Assembly Elections in the state.

APC spokesman in Rivers State, Darlington Nwauju disclosed this in a statement.

Darlington alleged that the governor connived with the Nigeria police personnel to steal legal documents meant for the election petition tribunal.

The police in the state recently arrested three lawyers of the APC while filing a legal proceeding against the results of the March 18 governorship election.

The lawyers – Jerry Aondo, Dr Sobere Nelson, and Odum Eyiba – who are from the chambers of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Tuduru Ede, were arrested at a hotel they had lodged in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.

Their arrest came 48 hours after the APC governorship candidate in the election, Tonye Cole led the party executives to the office of the Independent National Electoral Commission to protest against the refusal to release to him the Certified True Copies of documents used for the election as ordered by the court.

The lawyers were said to be preparing petitions for the party ahead of their appearance at the election tribunal on Monday, April 3, 2023.

They were taken to the police intelligence and surveillance unit, Ogunabali.

They had items such as laptops, exhibits required for their petition defence, agent’s copy of form extra result sheets (EC8), and certified true copies (CTC) of INEC documents seized by the police.

A source had identified SP Salihu Masalachi who is the Commander of Rivers State Special Surveillance Unit as the leader of the team who arrested the lawyers.

The security outfit, called C4i, was re-launched in 2021 by Wike.

Masalachi was also accused of being involved in separate attacks on opposition parties in the state.

Darlington while analysing Wike’s media chat on Tuesday said what the governor did – brandishing a flash drive purportedly containing details of APC legal briefs – is illegal.

He added that laptops and other evidence critical to the APC litigation at the Election Petitions Tribunal had been hacked into in order to steal information.

The statement read, “The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State has analysed today’s media chat by the outgoing Governor of the state and we are forced to deposit the following: 

“By virtue of his live media chat today, Gov. Wike confirmed that he, INEC and the Nigeria Police arrested the three (3) APC lawyers ostensibly to obtain our party’s evidence of the electoral heist that took place in Rivers State through coercion;

“By his own admittance, he connived with the operatives of the Nigeria Police to steal APC documents;

“In the annals of Nigerian political history, what Gov. Wike did by brandishing a flash drive purportedly containing details of APC legal briefs, is akin to the Water-gate scandal in the United States of America under President Richard Nixon, wherein five burglars linked to President Nixon were arrested at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in the Watergate office-apartment-hotel complex in Washington, D.C. on June 17, 1972. By this very public confession of Gov. Wike, it is very clear that the laptops and other evidence critical to the APC litigation at the Election Petitions Tribunal were hacked into in order to steal information.”