Press Statement
…Calls For Arrest Of Culprits
Mindful of the criminal implication of the act, and the danger it poses to the nation’s democratic electoral process, the Rivers State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has called on the Police and other security agencies to urgently be on the heels of leaders and members of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Rivers State, who have under the guise of conducting the party’s membership registration in the State unlawfully dispossess members of the public of their Permanent Voters Cards, PVCs.
The PDP says the political development is of much concern because of its criminal inclination and as it infringes on the fundamental rights of the original owners of the PVCs, who have been stripped of the rights to exercise their franchise and whose personal identities have also been impersonated, undermined, endangered and abused.
The PDP Chairman in Rivers State, Bro Felix Obuah, in a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Jerry Needam, emphasizes that it has not only received reports but has further confirmed that leaders and members of the APC now, under the pretext of revalidating their membership base, procure with N5,000 per PVC, and in some cases forcefully, through intimidation and threat, collect PVCs from the electorate across the State, particularly in the Ogoni LGAs, ONELGA, Port Harcourt, Obio-Akpor, Etche, Kalabari, Ahoada East, Ahoada West, Opobo/Nkoro, Andoni, Oyigbo etc, areas of the State.
We are also made to believe that the act of buying PVCs with such amount is an exposition of the APC taking undue advantage of the poverty and the hard economic situation that has ravaged the nation following the insensitivity and apparently lack of vision and focus by the APC administration under President Buhari.
The PDP views the actions by the APC to have negated the very essence for which the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) conceived and produced the cards which contain essential personal details of the individuals and original owners of the respective PVCs, saying rather than representing the change which the party professed and on which it rode to victory at the centre, the dissembling development is retrogressive, unpatriotic and portends grave danger to the survival of the nation’s democratic system, and should not be allowed to continue.
While calling on Rivers people to stop releasing their PVCs to fraudulent members and agents of the APC, no matter the persuasion, inducement, intimidation and threat, the PDP urges the various community leaders to check the trend and not to allow their communities to be used in perpetrating electoral fraud by the APC.
The PDP again appeals to the Police and other security agencies to be unbiased and more proactive in their responsibilities in checking all forms of crime, including electoral felony which has characterized the ongoing APC registration exercise in the State.
Signed
Jerry Needam, JP
Special Adviser on Media and Publicity
To the Rivers PDP Chairman, Bro Felix Obuah
