Bayelsa Polls: Asari-Dokubo gives FG 7 days ultimatum, ex-militants regroup

The leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force, Alhaji Mujahid

Asari-Dokubo, on Thursday 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.
ENDS…
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