By Mark Lenu
More candidates in last Saturday’s local government election in Rivers State have rejected the chairmanship election results declared by the Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission.
The PHALGA chairmanship candidates of the Accord Party, Engr Promise Alabere, and Boot Party, Tamunokuro Benson had joined the list of other candidates to reject the election results which were alleged to have been written in Government House, Port Harcourt.
RSIEC had through its Chairman, Justice Adolphus Enebell (retd) declared the APP chairmanship candidates, the winners of 22 chairmanship seats, adding that the AA Party won the Etche LGA.
Certificates of return were issued to the winning candidates on Sunday by RSIEC and they were same day sworn in by Governor Siminalayi Fubara.
The election was conducted without the participation of security agencies who relied on the ruling of Justice Peter Lifu of a federal high court, in Abuja to boycott the election.
The candidate said election result sheets were not brought to the polling units, insisting that the election was rigged to favor the governor’s preferred candidates.
In his reaction, a former SDP candidate for PHALGA Constituency 2 in the Rivers State House of Assembly, Hon Sam Ateke doubted the capacities of some councillorship candidates of the governor’s preferred party (APP).
The former SDP candidate said a lot of the councillorship candidates, contesting on the platform of the APP do not have the grassroots capacity to win elections in their respective wards.
The election was widely peaceful except for a few areas like Etche, Port Harcourt, and Obio/Akpor Local Government Areas where incidents of explosions and violence were recorded.
