The All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate in Rivers State, Tonye Cole, has narrated how thugs belonging to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) assaulted him in Port Harcourt on Monday.
It has been reported that APC chieftains, who had arrived in the area on an alleged invitation of the INEC were stopped from accessing the commission’s office by the protesters.
Some of the youths, however, took the moment to attack the APC chiefs, chasing them away from the INEC facility.
This resulted in heavy shooting grounding all activities, as armed youths took the area hostage with gunfire.
Speaking with Channels Television, Cole said he was assaulted by thugs who slapped and pelted him with water, food, and stones until he got injured on his back.
According to Cole, he and some leaders of his party were at the INEC office to obtain documents used for the election to file a petition to challenge the declaration of the PDP candidate, Siminialayi Fubara, as the winner of the election.
He noted that it took the effort of security personnel to forcefully evict him from the scene, adding that their vehicles were destroyed.
He said, “We are supposed to be in a democracy and one of the tenets of democracy is that after an election, INEC being supposedly an impartial umpire will have documents and these documents are available to everybody who participated in the election. These are critical documents that when we take to an electoral tribunal, we will build our case upon that to the electoral tribunal.
On Friday, we were at INEC, and we asked for these documents, but they have not given us a single one. We said we were coming back on Monday and because we said we are coming back, the PDP organised thugs everywhere to prevent us from getting to the INEC office.
I wasn’t deterred and so I went with my party chairman, the women leader, the youth leader, and senior officials of the APC to the INEC office.
They had barricaded the road from GRA Junction, everywhere boys, girls. They began to assault me, I came out and a woman began to drag my shirt, they pulled me from the back, first, they were throwing water then they began to throw food and the next minute they started throwing stones.
The next thing after that, we started hearing gunshots, it took my security people to forcefully evict me. They destroyed our vehicles, they injured me. They slapped me, they punched me, they pulled my shirt, they dragged me and then threw stones at me until I was injured in the back.”
