8th January, 2015
Okafor Ofiebor/Port Harcourt
The lawmaker representing Rivers South-East and All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate for the 2015 senatorial election, Senator Magnus Abe has condemned the attack on buses conveying APC faithful to the party’s presidential campaign rally in Port Harcourt by yet to be identified gunmen.
He described the attacks that led to various degrees of gunshot injuries on several persons as another politically motivated attempt on the lives of the people in the series of onslaught on members of the party and expressed worry over the security of voters during this year’s general elections.
Abe noted that attacks on APC members has become incessant without appropriate response from security operatives to unmask the perpetrators which according to him, portrays the operatives as insincere and compromised in their sacred service to the people.
“Since the Rivers crisis, security has become political; every gathering in Bori is preceded by gunfire and open display of banditry as well as terror, yet not one is ever arrested or prosecuted,” Abe said.
While lamenting that the country has become a theater for insurgency, he observed that a situation where in the north, people are being killed over their religious beliefs, and in the south, attacked and shot over political affiliation was unacceptable, insisting that the trend if not checked, may degenerate to anarchy.
The chairman, Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream) enlisted security agencies particularly the police to bring the perpetrators of this heinous crime to book, with a view to nipping the ceaseless slaughtering of innocent Nigerians in Rivers state to an end.
“I pray that Rivers people do not reach the conclusion that they have no one to protect them except themselves,” Abe declared.