The general conduct of the Police during the February 25 Presidential and National Assembly elections was commended by most election observers. Three weeks later, on March 18, during the Governorship and State Houses of Assembly elections, the complaints about Police conduct in the elections completely reversed, with the Police widely accused of unprofessionalism and deep partisan involvement and taking sides in the elections. Nowhere did this become starker than Rivers State where the Police appeared to have enmeshed itself in the murky waters of politics. Election in Rivers State, as in a few other States, including neighbouring Imo is reported to have been marred by electoral malpractices and irregularities. In Rivers State, following conclusion of polls and return of Siminialayi Fubara, governorship candidate of the ruling People\u2019s democratic Party (PDP) in the State as Governor-elect, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its governorship candidate, Tonye Cole disclosed that they would be challenging the election in court. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Saturday,\nApril 1, it was reported that the lawyers representing the APC and its\ngovernorship candidate in the governorship election petition tribunal were\narrested by the Police in Rivers State. The Police claimed it acted on a\ntip-off that some persons in a hotel (where the lawyers were lodged) were\nprinting materials suspected to be fake election materials. The lawyers were\nlater released. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Protesters\nidentified as supporters of the PDP assembled in front of the Independent\nNational Electoral Commission (INEC) headquarters in Rivers State on April 3, to\ndemand that the inspection of election materials and issuance of relevant documents\nby all interested political parties should take place simultaneously. According\nto them, this is to avoid a situation where evidence is surreptitiously\nreleased to a political party and used in the course of election petition.\nThe protest has frustrated the efforts\nof the APC and its governorship candidate to collect documents and inspect\nelection materials at the INEC office. The PDP has also accused Tonye Cole of\nleading thugs to attack the protesters on April 3. Decrying the situation,\nTonye Cole in a television interview recalled how he was assaulted by some of\nthe protesters and told to stay away from the INEC office. He described the\nactions of the PDP and its supporters as a ploy to prevent the APC from filing\nits petitions against the governorship election within the stipulated\ntimeframe. He also called on the leadership of INEC and the Inspector General\nof Police to wade into the matter, stating that the current atmosphere in the\nState is not conducive for the Rivers State governorship tribunal to operate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Police is\naccused of partisanship in the State. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The general conduct of the Police during the February 25 Presidential and National Assembly elections was commended by most election observers. Three weeks later, on March 18, during the Governorship and State Houses of Assembly elections, the complaints about Police conduct in the elections completely reversed, with the Police widely accused of unprofessionalism and deep […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3202,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3198\/revisions\/3202"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}