ALHAJI ASARI DOKUBO |
The leader of
the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force, Alhaji Mujahid Asari-Dokubo, on
Thursday, December 10, 2015 gave the Federal Government one week
ultimatum within it should hands off alleged plan to rig the
governorship election in Bayelsa State and install the All Progressives
Congress (APC) candidate, Timipre Sylva, as winner.
The ex-militant in a statement issued in
Yenagoa accused the Federal Government and its agencies of
collaborating with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)
to rig the election.
He warned that except government steers
clear of the alleged complicity, ex-militants would return to the creeks
to resume agitation with consequences on strategic oil installations.
He stated that in furtherance of this,
the ex-militants have regrouped under a new formation known as the
Reformed Ex-Agitators of the Niger Delta which he claimed he is now
leading to press for a democratic process in determining the outcome of
the election.
“If by next week the Federal Government
does not hands off from the Bayelsa polls by allowing the people to
freely choose their leader but still interfering through the observed
various guises and deception, then we would have no option than to
return to the creeks to press for our rights as patriotic citizens being
unduly oppressed and dehumanized all in the name of politics”, he
stated.
Asari-Dokubo said the new group frowned
at the role of the Joint Task Force (JTF) in the Southern IJaw election
saga, alleging that the military received direct instruction from
President Muhammadu Buhari to ensure that the APC candidate, Timipre
Sylva, was declared winner against the wish of the people.
He said, “We have said it before that
President Buhari is executing an anti-Ijaw agenda and his aim is to
steal our God-given resources to rebuild the north destroyed by Boko
Haram. That is why he is hell-bent on manipulating the electoral process
in Bayelsa State and hand it over to the APC. They are exploiting
Sylva’s greed and desperation for power and therefore using him to carry
out their evil agenda. But we want them to know that this country will
go up in flames if they try it. Boko Haram will be a child’s play if
President Buhari and his APC think they can upturn the people’s mandate.
It would be a grave injustice which can never stand. We are Ijaw people
and we have never been conquered”.
Dokubo-Asari stressed that going by the
results already declared by INEC, PDP’s candidate, governor Henry
Seriake Dickson, had won 6 of the 7 local governments declared with a
margin of 33,154 votes and has thus fulfilled constitutional requirement
of 2/3 spread and popular votes but without Southern Ijaw as the only
local government remaining.
He therefore called on the Federal
Government to ensure the election is rescheduled and conducted in a
transparent process just as he reiterated that his new organization
would be watching to see if the government still interferes in the
process till next week and would then launch “a full scale agitation to
save our people from modern day slavery of intimidation, oppression and
dictators.
SOURCE: The Trentonline newspaper.
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