Tonye Cole, the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State, on Monday narrated how he was assaulted by thugs of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at the office of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Port Harcourt.
The APC candidate was at INEC office to obtain documents to lodge a petition against INEC’s declaration of Siminialayi Fubara as the winner of the 18 March governorship election in the state.
Mr Fubara, who was a candidate of the PDP, scored 302,614 votes, while Mr Cole came second with 95,274 votes, according to INEC.
Cole had rejected the election result and vowed to challenge it at the tribunal.
He told Channels television that he was attacked by PDP thugs who prevented him and his team from accessing INEC office on Monday.
Mr Cole and some leaders of the APC in the state stormed the INEC office last Friday and threatened to return on Monday if the commission did not furnish them with documents needed to lodge a case at the Election Petition Tribunal.
Narrating his ordeal, Mr Cole said, “We are supposed to be in a democracy and one of the tenets of democracy is that after an election, INEC being supposedly an impartial umpire will have documents and these documents are available to everybody who participated in the election. These are critical documents which when we take to an electoral tribunal, we will build our case upon that to the electoral tribunal.
“On Friday, we were at INEC, and we asked for these documents, but they have not given us a single one. We said we were coming back today (Monday) and because we said we are coming back today, the PDP organised thugs everywhere to prevent us from getting to the INEC office.
“I wasn’t deterred and so I went with my party chairman, the women leader, the youth leader, and senior officials of the APC to the INEC office.
“They had barricaded the road from GRA Junction, everywhere boys, girls. They began to assault me, I came out and a woman began to drag my shirt, they pulled me from the back, first, they were throwing water then they began to throw food and the next minute they started throwing stones.
“The next thing after that, we started hearing gunshots, it took my security people to forcefully evict me. They destroyed our vehicles, they injured me. They slapped me, they punched me, they pulled my shirt, they dragged me and then threw stones at me until I was injured in the back,” he said.
Mr Cole said they ran to the APC office for safety but the thugs followed them to the party office.
Speaking further, Mr Cole urged INEC and the Inspector General of Police, Usman Baba to intervene, adding that the Rivers State governorship tribunal cannot hold in the state with the current events.