The Rivers state local government election scheduled to take place on October 5, 2024 may not likely hold except urgent steps are taken to address some grey areas in the process.
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This is as members of the All Progressives Congress, APC in the State loyal to the care taker committee Chairman , Chief Tony Okocha, said, that they will not participate in the October 5th, electoral exercise due to some procedural flaws.
Speaking on behalf of the APC members at an enlarged stakeholders meeting in Port Harcourt on Wednesday, Chief Tony Okocha said that the decision to boycott the election was because the process of conducting the election is not in tandem with any known law.
Okocha said that the party has already gone to court to stop all the processes of conducting the election because it does not follow all the due processes of law.
“The topical issue we have to discuss is the issue of APC contesting local government elections on the 5th of October. That is one thing you will like to hear . We are in court and I will not speak in any matter that is in court. The much I can say to you is that the cause of action is to restrain the agencies that will conduct that election that they announced behind us.
” We are not part of the decisions to conduct an election on the 5th of October. We have gone on air on the 19th of January if I remember to tell the INEC Chairman and the Commission to convey the process of having that local government election at that time. It was still within the ambits of the laws of the State because the law says three months to the expiration of the life of a Chairman or tenure of the council that the national body should organize election.
“That the process should commence, time table released and that the 21 days inside that three months election should hold. That law now as we speak will not work. It will not work you cannot go and convey local government elections in Rivers State without a party like APC. I know too that PDP is not even in the race so what we see is just a drama.
The reason we went to court is not because we don’t have the number or that we don’t have the strength I can assure you and you know for yourself that we have men and women that can contest any election and win.
“We are saying that the processes should be strengthened to be transparent so that we cannot just go and work on torns and get ourselves hurt. I was only doing a whistle blowing because that election will not represent the interest and the opinions of those who will vote. It is already stereotyped. The handout had already be written. We have build party formations we have build elections in this state. They are just coming in and they need to learn from us how we succeeded.
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” So if you have to go by good approach, you will not succeed. The day that they said they have stakeholders meeting, I was not invited. The APC Rivers State was not invited for the stakeholders meeting where the decision for October 5th election was taken. So we cannot participate in that election because there was a deliberate plan to make us worthless so we went to court.
“We are not saying we wouldn’t contest election our contention is until the processes is in tandem with the law and that we as a party we are also aware we were not carried along in the entire arrangement.”
