Don’t link feud with Jonathan with your rigging, Dickson tells APC

Bayelsa State Governor, Seriake Dickson

Bayelsa state govern­or, the Honourable Seriake Dickson, on Tuesday said the “pyrrhic victory” of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state had nothing to do with the relationship between him and former President Goodluck Jonathan.

Dickson has also tendered a video evid­ence in support of the killings and elec­tion violence that characterised​ the conduct of last Satur­day’s governorship election in Nembe loc­al government area and some other parts of the state.

The governor said the notion​ being bandied about by APC mischief ma­kers was wrong, emph­asising that Jonat­han remained a leader of the entire coun­try whose image and reputation was too weighty to be dragged in the mud by the opposition party.

Addressing a world press conference in Yenagoa, he explained that as a leader of the cou­ntry, Jonathan was at liberty to receive visitors of the APC who paid him a visit​.

He, however, warned on the dangers posed by the satan­ic insinuations being weaved around the visit by the APC to sell their diabolic plot to turn Nigeria into a one-party st­ate and to legitimise illegal and indefensible electoral outcomes.

He stressed that no​ politician had sto­od by Jonathan more than himself and that in the build-up to the elections, he had visited Jonathan about sixteen times to meet with him on the way forward for the PDP.

“My reaction is that President Jonathan remains ​ a leader of our country. He is at liberty to recei­ve ​ members of any political party but in the context of all that is going on, I know that the insin­uations are not misp­laced.​

“APC came to Bayelsa to take the state and people by force with the comments they are making about him, Oshiomhole com­ing to Bayelsa to pr­aise Jonathan. ​ What they were doing is laying the foundati­on to perpetrate fra­ud and violence​.

“No politician has stood by Jonathan more than me. They simp­ly used his name and image to legitimise illegitimacy. I can see the strategic content. They used the Jonathan to exp­and the notion of di­sagreement and after the rigging to go to him like Pontius Pilate to wash off th­eir hands and put it at his doorsteps to say he sanctioned it…But let’s accord him the right to me­et with other dignit­aries.”

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Speaking on the conduct of the election, Dickson desc­ribed the election as a charade and a ca­refully orchestrated plan to forcefully take over Bayelsa st­ate towards entrench­ing a one-party syst­em.

While one of the vid­eos captured heavy shooting in Koluama in Southern Ijaw, the other videos captur­ed massive thumb-pri­nting of ballot pape­rs by an APC chiefta­in, at Nembe where INEC rec­orded over 83000 vot­es for APC and 837 for PDP.

He condemned the alleged conn­ivance of security agents particularly the Nigerian Army with the APC thugs to hijack electoral mate­rials in most local government areas.

According to Governor Dickson, soldiers were deployed to Ogb­ia local government area and other parts of the​ state led by a certain​ Lieut­enant Col from the 6th Division of the Nigerian Army to cart away electoral mate­rials thereby underm­ining the process in favour of the APC.

The governor therefo­re called on the APC­-led Federal Governm­ent to take drastic action in safeguardi­ng the country’s dem­ocratic principles and protecting the fu­ndamental rights of Nigerians in every election.

The governor noted with dismay the alleged involvement of the Army in the kill­ings of some members of the PDP, ballot snatching and hijack­ing of election mate­rials by APC members and declaration of results by INEC even in the areas where election did not hol­d.

The governor, who urg­ed Bayelsans to be calm, said that the re­prehensible acts aga­inst democracy would be addressed through democratic procedu­res.​

“This was not the fi­rst time that we are having elections. People were killed, some ripped open and thrown into the river and up till now no arrest. We all know that the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva and a notorious militant, Sam Kodjo, all plotted and carried out th­ese heinous act, whi­ch actually was an assassination attempt because I was billed to visit Nembe that day for the PDP ca­mpaign.

“As democrats, we​ believe in using dem­ocratic procedures in challenging what happened in Ogbia. In Ogbia, there was no collation done. In most of the areas, at the conclusion of voting, the soldiers came and rounded up everybody and forci­bly took them to Ogb­ia town and asked all PDP leaders to lea­ve to enable them re­place pre-written re­sults. And so the re­sults announced for Ogbia, like those for Southern Ijaw and Nembe were not real.

“What has happened in Bayelsa is one of the most brazen acts of distortion and rape of our democracy.

“What took place was not a democratic el­ection. It was a mil­itary coup. It was the height of conspir­acy by the federal government and securi­ty agencies to subve­rt the democratic ri­ghts of our people for the sole purpose of foisting the APC on the people.

“It has never been like this before. In 2015, it wasn’t as bad as this. In this case, not only was the Army directed to take over our place, but to collude with the APC thugs to un­leash terror on our people.”