By Kingsley Omonobi, Ben Agande, Omeiza Ajayi, & Dave Ihemnachor

Ahead of Saturday’s parliamentary rerun elections in Rivers State, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and the All Progressives Congress, APC, were yesterday, locked in a war of words over alleged plans for violence by one another.

In the face of the clams and counterclaims, including claims that Governor Nyesom Wike had been targeted for assassination, the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, pleaded with frightened corps members who earlier volunteered to supervise the elections not to back out.

The Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, in a retort to Governor Nyesom Wike’s claims of an assassination plot against him,  dismissed the allegation which he said was not worth responding to.

This came as  the state’s Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, Elder Aniedi Ikoiwak, told Vanguard that allegations of a plot to rig the elections were unfounded, even as the Commission, last night, released details of the constituencies where the rerun elections would hold.

The elections, the  commission said in a statement, would hold in all three senatorial districts, eight federal constituencies, and 10 state constituencies.

Meanwhile, a Federal High Court sitting in Port Harcourt, yesterday, ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to include Tai Local Government Area among the local government areas where the elections would hold. The court’s decision was quickly welcomed by the PDP.

The war of words between the two major political gladiators was triggered after the PDP accused the ruling APC in Abuja of working hand in glove with security agencies and INEC to rig the election with a plan to assassinate Governor Wike as part of the scheme. The APC, in a sharp response, accused Governor Wike of storing weapons to be used against the people on election day.

The PDP, in its statement  by party spokesman, Prince Dayo Adeyeye, also accused the APC of adopting a new rigging formula different from what it allegedly used in recent governorship elections in Edo and Ondo States to be used in Rivers.

The PDP, which accused the immediate past governor of the state and the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, of being behind the plot, said the alleged withdrawal of 70% of security aides of the governor, including his Chief Security Officer, were part of the script.

“Governor Wike has written two letters to the Inspector General of Police, IGP, reporting this obvious breach of his constitutional rights which has received no response but instead, the CSO, who happens to be the governor’s number one line of defence, was withdrawn as the reply from the IGP.

This latest development has confirmed that the former governor of Rivers State and now Minister of Transportation, Chibuike  Amaechi, in collaboration with his the Federal Government, and its security agencies, has finalized plans to assassinate the governor of  Rivers State. This is despicable and a complete affront and declaration of war on  Rivers people using the apparatus of state.

“For the record, the APC used ‘Inconclusive Elections’ to rig Kogi, Nasarawa, Imo and some other by-elections but failed in Bayelsa and Rivers States. In Edo State, the APC, in collaboration with INEC and the security agencies, postponed the election on the pretext of security threats in order to perfect their rigging plans which they successfully implemented during the poll.

The latest was the Ondo State governorship election in which  the APC again deployed another method to rig the election in advance by causing Justice Okon Abang of FCT, High Court, and INEC to delist the name of our candidate, Eyitayo Jegede, for three weeks thereby incapacitating him from campaigning and selling the manifesto of our party to the electorates in Ondo State.

“On the forthcoming Rivers rerun, they have shifted and delayed the elections for no genuine reason. The new method being applied by the APC against the Rivers rerun elections now is the withdrawal of security details of the governor in order to expose him to danger of assassination and possibly intimidate him to succumb to their rigging plans,” the PDP said, as it tasked the IG and Director-General of the Department of State Services to secure the governor and government institutions in the state.

On its part,  APC in a statement  by its national secretary, Mai Mala Buni, urged security agencies to beam their searchlight on Governor Wike, saying:  “APC  alerts security agencies on reports of a massive arms build-up by the Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike-led administration in the lead-up to the December 10, 2016, legislative re-run elections in the state.”

APC said nobody was after the governor, arguing that he was only afraid of the monumental loss that awaited his party should the election be conducted in an atmosphere where security is fool-proof.