Kelechi Esogwa-Amadi
The governorship candidate of the Labour Party in Rivers State, Chief Isaac Wonwu, has expressed hope of winning Saturday’s governorship election.
He spoke in his house at Elele.
Chief Isaac Wonwu, however, hinged his chances of winning the election on the ability of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to ensure that the exercise was free, fair and credible.
He said: “Our chances are clear as possible because we expect that there will be free and fair election. We’re actually committed and relying that our expected electorate –the women, the aged ones- should be allowed to vote and that the votes should be allowed to count.
“The majority voters in Nigeria are the women and the aged too count about 30 percent of the electorate in our area. And we expect that turning around all that should be able to give us a genuine number of votes for winning. But a situation where violence, manipulations and rigging are brazenly taking place also slims our chance.”
The Labour Party governorship candidate expressed dissatisfaction with INEC’s level of preparation for the election, pointing out that the N200 billion given to the Commission to organize the election should have enabled it to do a better job.
“We believe that with the preparation of INEC with over two hundred billion and something naira voted for INEC, it should have done more preparations than what we’re actually seeing now. The entire exercise could be seen as a mere sham,” he said.
Chief Wonwu wondered why the aspect of the electoral act that will allow Nigerians to vote electronically had not been signed into law yet. He maintained that with electronic voting, election rigging would be eradicated.
“With electronic voting, you can just sit in your house to vote. I think this is deliberate, to manipulate Nigerians. This is deliberate to short-change us. This is deliberate to rig the election, otherwise we should have subverted to investigate the situation,” he explained.
The Elele, Ikwerre-born politician frowned at the presence of heavily armed military men in Rivers State in the name of election. He also condemned a situation where individuals who were not contesting for election would be parading with armed soldiers all over the state “to manipulate the election.”
Such a development, he insisted, should be investigated while such individuals should be called to order.
TPCN learnt that the minister of transport and leader of APC in Rivers State, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, was spotted parading around Port Harcourt and some communities in Ikwerre Local Government Area with a long convoy that included soldiers while the election was ongoing on Saturday.
