Members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State have accused the Police Command in the state of being partisan.
This is coming in less than two weeks to the rescheduled March 28 and April 11 elections, as a crowd of protesters stormed the gates of the police command to express their grouse over what they call the undue arrests and intimidation of members of the party in the state.
The protesters marched to the gates of the Rivers State Police Command to register their grievance, chanting solidarity songs.
The Rivers State Commissioner of Police, Dan Bature, called for calm and demanded for a meeting with some of the leaders of the protesters in his office.
However, the Police Commissioner said his command would not turn a blind eye to criminal activities for the sake of politics.
The Rivers State Commissioner of Health, Dr Sampson Parker, had earlier expressed worries over increasing number of election violence related deaths, saying “the electoral violence in the the State is epidemic”.
With the elections less than two weeks away, the clamour for violence free polls is not just a call from Rivers people but a cry for help.
However, the Assistant Inspector General of police (AIG) in charge of zone 6, Mr Tunde Ogunsakin, at a gathering of security agencies, security experts and political stakeholders with focus on the conduct of a secure, peaceful and credible polls in Rivers State, stressed that the responsibility of ensuring credible and peaceful polls in the 2015 election is everyone’s call.
