Amaechi Okonkwo
The Governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress APC, Tonye Cole has indicated that his party will petition against reports of vote buying and intimidation of voters from some polling units in the state.
Cole indicates casting his vote at his Ward 12, Unit 2 Akukutoru Local Government Area of Rivers State.
Speaking after casting his ballot Cole said that he had got reports of vote buying and intimidation from some units saying he would petition against the units found culpable.
He said; “Well so far we are getting some reports of vote buying and a bit of intimidation. Reports of people being warned that if they don’t vote PDP, they should write their will and they should come out.
“So we are taking notes of these things and taking notes of the unit where that is been reported because we are going to write a petition against that unit where there is intimidation and threat.
“In order areas, we see that election is going peacefully but we are also hearing reports and we need to make sure that this does not happen immediately after the voting process and counting there is some threat that there will be hijacks of some of the materials and in that case, we have also alerted that they should be on alert so that there will be no hijack of votes.
“We have also gotten some reports from Asari- Toru that voting has not started at all because the collation/returning officers are and some of the electoral officers have not and cannot be found so there are several reports like that.
“Well in the general outcome as a whole, we are believing that we will still come out on top, but we want to say that it’s very important that intimidation should not be part and parcel of an electoral process, people should be allowed to vote freely and vote their mind so outside of that, that’s an area that we must work on”.
On his part, the Accord Governorship candidate, Dumo Lulu-Briggs described the voting process in this election as seamless.
He said; “The process is seamless I would say at this time. I made the same assessment in the last elections, it was seamless up until 3 PM when all the difficulty and so on started. So far and so good, a lot of people have voted and there is no intimidation and harassment.
This morning, even though there are a lot of towns criers sent out to intimidate people but from last night till now people are coming out in their numbers to cast their votes”.
He added; “Nobody can deny anybody their right to a chance to choose who will become their Governor. They should come and cast their votes and whosoever wins, wins. Rivers State deserve a person who will be its governor. This election is local, the other one was Presidential and it is a bit distant”.
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