The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has demanded the immediate release of the governorship and house of assembly elections in Rivers State, just as it condemned the attempt by the army to interfere with the collation of results at the INEC headquarters in Port Harcourt on Sunday.

The call by the PDP follows the suspension on Sunday of all electoral processes in Rivers State by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), citing widespread disruption of the polls in the state.

In a statement, the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Kola Ologbodiyan, condemned the disagreement between the army and the police at the INEC collation centre, adding that the incident could jeopardise the outcome of the elections in the state.

“Nigerians watched in bewilderment as soldiers, in the company of APC thugs invaded polling units in Rivers state, unleashed violence on voters, disrupted polling processes and hauled away electoral materials, just because the APC is not in the ballot, following its self-inflicted exclusion from the election,” stated the PDP.

While calling on the international community to keep an eye on the situation, the PDP added, “The use of soldiers to ambush the electoral process and confiscate results is an extreme scheme by the APC and the Buhari Presidency to enmesh the Rivers state governorship election in controversy, seeing that there is no way they can take away victory from the PDP.

The party insisted that the deployment of soldiers to confiscate results would not change the victory already recorded by the PDP in Rivers State, adding that the PDP “already has valid documents of all the results as delivered from all the polling units where elections held across the state.”

•Sourced from a Channels TV report

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