Our attention has been drawn to a fanthom judicial commission of enquiry sitting in Bayelsa state at the instant of the state government with a mandate to look into the purported violence that characterised the recent elections in the state.
As an Observer group which monitored the Presidential, National Assembly and state house of assembly elections in Bayelsa State, we wish to state that this panel is an abuse of executive privilege in an attempt to cover up the role of the state government as led by Governor Seriake Dickson as regards the violence that was visited on the people during the polls.
As an observer group, we had men and women who were deployed to all the local governments of Bayelsa state and reports gathered which form our position shows the violence of the election day was masterminded by the instrument of the state in connivance with the police using the power of incumbency to force the will of the people in her favour.
Governor Dickson’s goal in setting up the panel is to mask his own terror and lawlessness at the polls. The governor is setting up the panel is on a mission to thwart facts and colour truth towards indicting notable Bayelsans who were not seen anywhere near any site of the violence that broke out.
Dickson specifically excoriated former Bayelsa State Governor and APC leader, Chief Timipre Sylva.
In Dickson’s panel, Sylva and APC stalwarts are guilty of hijacking of electoral materials, killings – and even terrorism.
Expectedly, the panel has been awash with reports of “violence” by APC in parts of the state, particularly Twon-Brass and Bassambiri-Nembe.
What we witnessed and observed run contrary to these claims.
In Twon-Brass for example, our observer there, one Okolosi Jerry, the Caretaker chairman of Brass, Victor Isaiah, stormed INEC Collation Centre with a bus load of thugs, rents the air with war chants. Mrs. Marie Ebikake, the PDP candidate for Brass/Nembe Federal House of Representatives, accompanied Isaiah. They went into the collation room with the intent to stop the collation and announcement of results.
Twon-Brass is the senatorial headquarters for Bayelsa East Senatorial district, and all election results from the area should be collated and announced in Twon-Brass and not Yenagoa where Victor Isaiah and Jonathan Obuebite (Bayelsa State Commissioner for Education), in connivance with the Nigerian Police, attempted to cart away election results.
This and many more of such reports we have from our observers and it then becomes laughable that the perpetrators of evil and arson are now same people crying fowl.
We call on the Bayelsa state government to put an end to insulting our sensibilities by the charade called a panel of enquiry and have it disbanded and call on her to direct her officials who have been put under investigation for alleged role in the violence to cooperate and not use their offices and cover of government to evade justice.
Nigeria’s democracy can no longer be subjected to the executive recklessnes of these over ambitious governors and we here call for an immediate disbandment of the judicial panel of inquiry, as its continued operation amounts to executive recklessness.
For:
Network for Democracy and Transformation.
