Some residents of Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital have declared their readiness to pay back the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) for its support to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state’s presidential elections.
Some of the residents, who spoke on Wednesday following the announcement of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, of the APC as the winner of the presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) alleged that the Labour Party candidate (LP) won the election.
They claimed that the PDP did everything humanly possible to ensure that Tinubu won, noting that they would repay the PDP in the forthcoming governorship and House of Assembly elections.
“We are obediently waiting for March 11 governorship election to repay the PDP for the treatment it meted to the LP on February 25,” says Micheal Mkpelu, a commercial bus driver plying the Town/Ikwerre Road route.
He said there was no way the APC would have clinched the presidential votes without the “full support of the PDP and its members who turned the election into another form of war.”
Another resident, an Obidient in the Town axis of Port Harcourt, said that he has started mobilizing people to still come out in large numbers to cast their votes because “we don’t have any other state apart from Rivers and we want to have a big say in who becomes the next governor.”
In some parts of the city, there was graveyard silence as residents wearing gloomy faces described Tinubu’s victory as a charade that would further plunge the country into a more economic pit.
In motor parks, markets and newspaper stands, people complained bitterly over INEC’s decision to pronounce Tinubu the winner of the election when Nigerians were fast asleep, instead of doing so during the day.
“I have witnessed several elections in 62 years on earth. I was a young boy when FEDECO ran the 1983 election. but what just happened with INEC is unheard of.” says an elderly man who owns a pharmaceutical store in Woji.
