Over 500 persons, most of them thugs have been deployed to the INEC office in Lokoja by the outlaw Governor of Kogi State, Mr Yahaya Bello to attack lawyers and forensic experts of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) to prevent them from examining documents and materials emanating from the Kogi State November 11 Governorship Elections.
The thugs wearing SDP Tshirts and posters procured for them by Bello and his gang of outlaws in the Kogi State Government have also been detailed to attack and sack the office to ensure the materials needed for our party to prescute its petition at the tribunal are compromised. Right now, they have seiged on the entire Marine Street housing the Lokoja INEC office and several other adjourning Streets, threatening the security of INEC and the entire sensitive materials there.
They are chanting war slogans claiming they are “SDP members” who are against the movement of Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS)Machines to Abuja for security reasons and the forensic examination of electoral documents.
Bello’s desperate resort to this extreme plan of overrunning INEC through an insurrection of rented thugs was after our campaign raised alarm at the weekend to forestall his earlier plan to burn down the Lokoja INEC office housing the materials.
Curiously, the INEC office shares proximity with the State Police Headquarters, where Bello’s notorious accomplice, one Bethrand Onuoha, is the Commissioner of Police. Onouha’s police did absolutely nothing as hundreds of thugs arrived in buses to take over INEC from the very early hours of this morning.
We are shocked that other security agencies particularly the Directorate of State Security (DSS) also did nothing to secure the INEC office and the materials despite our official statements in the past few days raising alarm on the plot to attack INEC office by Mr Yahaya Bello who has never pretended about his preference for violence and extra- legal criminal tactics to gain advantage in his dealings.
Mr. Yahaya Bello must not be allowed to crudely and brazenly rig the November 11th elections in favor of his puppet cousin and thereafter compromise the judicial process by renting thugs to attack INEC and compromise materials needed for evidence.
We are told that most of the sensitive materials needed for inspection may have even been already compromised by INEC Staff who are his agents and accomplices and are now waiting for this orchestrated attack to claim the materials were lost to the mob.
We expect Bethrand Onuoha, the Police Commissioner who led hired thugs to kill other policemen for the offense of providing security in the House of our campaign DG few days to the election to put up a feeble futile act of trying to disperse the mob in other to later claim his men were overwhelmed by the sheer number of the mob.
We are calling on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to immediately order the quelling of this rented insurrection to safeguard our fragile democracy. If this extreme criminality by Mr Bello and his security chiefs collaborators is not quelled and allowed to prevail, then a very dangerous precedent would have been set.
Our country must demonstrate that no desperate outlaw sitting in an office covered by statutory immunity will be allowed to undermine the very foundation of our constitutional democracy
– even if he belongs to the ruling party.
SIGNED
Faruk Adejoh-Audu,
Spokesman,
Muri-Sam Governorship Campaign Council,
Social Democratic Party (SDP)
Wedsday, November 29, 2023
