Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, National Chairman of All Progressives Congress (APC) has condemned as a disgrace the mindless violence and killings in Rivers State before, during and after the National and state assembly elections at the weekend.
Odigie-Oyegun said some of the barbaric killings which took place in the state should never have happened anywhere in Nigeria.
The APC chairman made these remarks on Thursday while addressing journalists after the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting in Abuja.
He gave the assurance from President Muhammadu Buhari that all the perpetrators would not get away with the heinous killings, otherwise, they would export it to other parts of the country indirectly if they are not arrested and punished according to the laws against such bestiality.
Mr Edegbe Odemwingie, Assistant Director of Publicity of the party, quoted its chairman as saying in the full statement which reads:
“We went through all our experiences since the last elections and we have taken decisions as to where our strengths were, where we did not quite measure up and all these are going to be addressed.
“For the first time, NEC has established a budget for the party and we have set up a committee to look once more into the constitution of the party to be able to streamline it. More particularly, NEC decided to downsize our Board of Trustees in line with all other constitutional amendment.
“We don’t have any particularly number, but it is going to be seriously downsized. The committee will be headed be the National Legal Adviser. We will put our heads together on that in the next day or two and there may be need to hold on a little bit.
On National Publicity Secretary
These are constitutional matters. The zone has to now propose a replacement. It is part of the decisions of today that we are going to have congresses all over the nation to fill all vacancies at all levels of the party which resulted from victory at the election by party officials who decided to contest, appointments at federal level and at state levels. There are a lot of vacancies and we need congresses because that is what the constitution provides. No day has been fixed for the congresses because we just took the decision today and we are going to work on it.
On Rivers rerun election:
O Rivers, Rivers. It is a disgrace. That is the only thing one can say. Some of the things that happened and some of the killings that happened would never have been able to happen in this country. But the assurance we can give you and the assurance Mr President has given us is that these issues will be vigorously addressed. People must not get away with that level of dastardly act and killings of the most bestial act; and in no circumstance must behaviour like that be allowed to spread to the rest of the country because unless you address it, you are in fact inviting other states to set up their own military wing.
