The Niger Delta Defenders Forum (NDDF) has sent a strong warning to the Nigerian Army over its recent provocative statement that political thugs should steer clear of Bayelsa, Rivers, Akwa-Ibom and Delta States in the forthcoming general elections in the country.
The Nigerian Army’s statement warning political thugs in Bayelsa, Rivers, Akwa-Ibom, Delta States came on the heels of a directive from President Muhammadu Buhari that anyone who snatched ballot boxes on election day would do so at the risk of being killed by the army.
In a press statement made available to journalists
in Yenagoa on Tuesday, the Coordinator of the NDDF, Comrade Kokobaiye Abeki, said however, that the Nigerian Army should not in any guise use the election to kill youths of the Niger Delta region.
“Let me use this opportunity to warn the Nigerian Army against using the rescheduled elections to main and kill our Niger Delta youths. The constitutional responsibility of the Nigerian Army is to defend the territorial integrity of this nation and to quell insurrection. The Army has no constitutional duty to carry out in the conduct of free and fair elections in this country and any attempt to use that institution to intimidate, harass and oppress the Niger Delta people from exercising thier constitutional and political right to vote in the election shall be resisted.
“The NDDF will not fold its hands and watch this sinister plot of the failed APC-led Federal Government to materialize in the region. I want to ask the Army, is it only in the Niger Delta that the so-called political thugs are found? Are there no political thugs in the South-West, in the North and other parts of the country? So why do you have to single out states in the South-South region in your quest to deal decisively with political thugs in the elections?
“There is more to this statement than meets the eye as to what President Buhari and his cohorts at planning against Niger Deltans. It is now self-evident that the APC-led Federal Government is bent on using state institutions to secure victory at all just any cost in the forthcoming elections. But we will not tolerate any form of intimidation from anybody because the Buhari Administration has failed this country and no amount of intimidation will break the resolve of the people of Nigeria to vote out his incompetent and epileptic government”, Abeki stated.
He therefore called on the people of the Niger Delta to vote massively for Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and all PDP candidates as they go out to vote on election day.
