Rivers Governorship Election Programmed to Favour PDP—APC Field Agent

William-Wobodo who spoke as a witness at the Rivers State Election Petitions Tribunal sitting in Abuja told the tribunal about the many misdeeds and infringements that characterised the April election in virtually every part of the state.  

According to him, the flagrant violation of electoral rules of engagement by both officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC, and members of the PDP could not have resulted in any form of fair electoral contest. He therefore said that it would have amounted to a big injustice for anybody to judge such an unusual election that was marked by intimidation, violence, killings and harassment as free and fair.

William-Wobodo stated that even before the early morning violent disruption of accreditation which was recorded in almost every part of the state, signs of violence and subversion of the peoples wishes were already evident even before the eve of the election.

Under cross-examination, he spoke on the many abnormalities that played out in the collation of the results. He cited instances where collation officers awarded figures to political parties that did not even take part in the election.

Citing Exhibit A25, UPP, a relatively unknown party, the agent revealed, was allocated votes despite not being on the ballot. The same error was also repeated in Exhibit A26 where CPN, another party also benefitted from such indiscriminate allocation of votes.

He rounded off by saying categorically that there was no form of collation of results in any of the local government areas. He alluded to Asari-Toru where collation officials made several alterations even in the open.