Tonye Cole, the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate in Rivers State for the March 18 election, has accused the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of sending thugs to attack him and his team on Monday to prevent them from accessing the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) office in Port Harcourt.
Cole stated that he and some leaders of his party went to the INEC office to obtain election documents in order to file a petition challenging the declaration of the PDP candidate, Siminialayi Fubara, as the election winner, but were attacked by thugs allegedly sent by the PDP.
Cole said that he was assaulted by thugs who pelted him with water, food, and stones until he was injured.
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 which 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 today (Monday) and because we said we are coming back today, 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,” Cole narrated.
He said they left the INEC office and ran to the APC office for safety but that the thugs followed them to the APC office,
He asked INEC, the Inspector General of Police, Usman Baba, saying that the Rivers State governorship tribunal cannot hold in the state with the current happenings.
INEC had declared PDP’s Fubara winner of the governorship election with 302,614 votes while Cole polled 95,274 votes. Cole rejected the result and vowed to challenge it at the tribunal.