The National Working Committee of the All Progressives Congress has said it holds the Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, personally responsible for the killing spree in the state.
The acting National Chairman of the party, Chief Segun Oni, said this at a press briefing in Abuja, on Wednesday.
According to him, utterances credited to the governor ahead of the upcoming rerun in the state have turned the state into “a killing field.”
The APC said it was drawing the attention of security agencies and other relevant bodies to the latest string of gruesome politically-motivated killings targeting the APC members.
Oni said, “As chief security officer of the state, we hold the governor responsible for what is happening in the state. He has to sit up.”
The party noted that the violence was directly linked to the March 19, 2016 Rivers State rerun into the National Assembly and state House of Assembly.
Oni added, “Rivers State has been turned into a killing field, with APC members being murdered on a daily basis. APC members in Rivers State are fast becoming endangered species.
“On Saturday night, March 5, 2016, masked gunmen first shot dead Franklin Obi, the APC ward chairman in Omoku, headquarters of Ogab/Egbema/Ndoni council and then beheaded him. The gunmen went ahead and killed his wife and 18-year-old son, Bestman.
“The APC NWC also received reports that four APC members were recently killed in Obibi, Etche Local Government Areas in Rivers State. Gabriel Cookey was clubbed to death in Opobo, Opobo/Nkoro council. In the last two weeks, over 30 APC members had been killed in different parts of the state.”
The APC described the security situation in Rivers State as clearly an affront to the Federal Government’s power to protect life and property within its territory.
The party also appealed to security agencies to, as a matter of urgency, rise up to stem the tide of killings and other forms of violence in the state.
It insisted that contrary to claims by the state government that the killings were as a result of cult-related violence, the killings were politically-motivated.
The APC described the killings as a real emergency which was distressing, tragic and a huge source of worry to the party.
In his reaction, Governor Nyesom Wike described the allegations as “baseless, irresponsible and out of tune with the realities on the ground.”
Wike, who spoke through his Special Assistant on Media, Simeon Nwakaudu, in a telephone interview on Wednesday, said, “The violence is cult-related, it is not political. The governor is working with the relevant security agencies to bring the situation under control. It is cheap for anyone to try to make political capital out of the misery of our people.”
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