The Rivers State chapter of the All Progressives Congress has pulled out of the October 5, 2024 local council area election in the state.
The Chairman of the Caretaker Committee of the party in the state, Chief Tony Okocha, announced the decision on Wednesday.
Okocha, who spoke at an enlarged stakeholders meeting of the party in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, said the APC would not participate in the election because of some procedural flaws.
He said the party has already gone to court to stop the process of conducting the election.
Okocha said at the stakeholders meeting: “The topical issue we have to discuss is the issue of APC contesting local government elections on the 5th of October.
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“That is one thing you would like to hear.
“We are in court and I will not speak in any matter that is in court.
“The much I can say to you is that the cause of action is to restrain the agencies that will conduct that election that they announced behind us.
“We are not part of the decisions to conduct an election on the 5th of October.
“We have gone on air on the 19th of January, if I remember, to tell the SIEC Chairman and the Commission to convene the process of having that local government election at that time.
“It was still within the ambit of the laws of the State because the law says three months to the expiration of the life of a Chairman or tenure of the council that the national body should organise election.
“That the process should commence, time table released and that the 21 days inside that three months, election should hold.
“That law now as we speak will not work.
“It will not work.
“You cannot go and convene local government elections in Rivers State without a party like APC.
“I know too that PDP is not even in the race so what we see is just a drama.
“The reason we went to court is not because we don’t have the number or that we don’t have the strength.
“I can assure you and you know for yourself that we have men and women that can contest any election and win.
“We are saying that the processes should be strengthened to be transparent so that we cannot just go and walk on thorns and get ourselves hurt.
“I was only doing a whistle blowing because that election will not represent the interest and the opinions of those who will vote.
“It is already stereotyped.
“The handout had already been written.
“We have built party formations, we have built elections in this state.
“They are just coming in and they need to learn from us how we succeeded.
“So if you don’t go by a good approach, you will not succeed.
“The day that they said they had a stakeholders meeting, I was not invited.
“The APC Rivers State was not invited for the stakeholders meeting where the decision for the October 5th election was taken.
“So we cannot participate in that election because there was a deliberate plan to make us worthless, so we went to court.
“We are not saying we wouldn’t contest the election.
“Our contention is until the process is in tandem with the law and that we as a party are also aware we were not carried along in the entire arrangement.”
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