Factional governorship candidate of All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State, Tonye Cole, has called for fresh governorship election in Rivers on the grounds of controversies leading to the March 9 election.
Mr Cole and another factional Rivers APC governorship candidate, Magnus Abe, were embroiled in dispute over who would emerge the party’s authentic governorship candidate until the court waded in.
Cole, Abe and other APC candidates for the national and state assembly elections in the state, were then barred from participating in the election.
However, Cole said on Thursday that a new governorship election should be conducted to restore confidence of the electorate in the electoral process.
He said: “If there is one thing that I am certain of, it is that the entire election of March 9th is totally and completely compromised from head to toe. There are no results that would be announced today that would reflect the will of the people in any form or manner.
“There are just as many people who do not trust and will not accept an election that delivers PDP today because of the belief that the umpire has granted unfettered access to the result sheets and a yeoman’s job has been done on the collated results that is guaranteed to withstand any scrutiny through the election tribunals or any court of law thereafter.
“This is just as there are as many people who will not accept a result that delivers the AAC because of the belief that the Election Day results were structured to favour them by the direct involvement of the military as insinuated by the PDP.”
