Tonye Cole claims PDP thugs attacked him at INEC Office

Tonye Cole, an All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate for governor of Rivers State in the March 18 election, has alleged that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) sent thugs to attack him and his team on Monday in order to prevent them from entering the INEC office in Port Harcourt.

The PDP candidate, Siminialayi Fubara, was declared the winner of the race, but Cole said he and other party leaders were beaten by thugs who had reportedly been dispatched by the PDP while trying to get election paperwork for a petition to protest the decision.

Speaking to newsmen in Port Harcourt, Cole said he was assaulted by thugs whom he said pelted him with water, food, and stones until he got injured.

He 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,” Cole narrated.

He pleaded with the INEC national office and the Inspector General of Police, Usman Baba, to intervene, claiming that the current events prevent the Rivers State governorship tribunal from taking place in the state.

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