APC raises the alarm on suspected killer squads targeting opposition

THE All Progressives Congress (APC) has raised the alarm at the alleged killing of its members and supporters in Rivers State as the general elections draw nearer, suspecting the existence of killer squads with a mandate to silence the opposition.

In a statement issued in Lagos on Wednesday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the killing of nine APC members in two separate incidents in Rivers on Saturday night raises a very serious concern about the motive of the killings.

It said the fact that all those killed, including five at the D-Line of Port Harcourt and four along the Eastern Bypass in the Marine Base near the state capital, were members of the APC is a clear indication that the killings may have been politically-motivated.

Also worrisome, APC said, is the attack on Chidi Adi Amaechi, the younger brother of the state governor, Rotimi Amaechi and a student of Igbinedion University in Benin, by machete-wielding young men. The attackers had stormed his room in the early hours of Wednesday (March 11th, 2015) and inflicted injuries on him.

“It is difficult to see these attacks as a mere happenstance, against the backdrop of the ceaseless attacks on APC members and supporters in the Okrika council area of the state, where the opposition has been the victim of at least three bomb attacks, and the hate messages being purveyed by the President’s wife, Dame Patience Jonathan, who hails from Okrika.

‘’We know that because they have no answer to the runaway popularity of our party in the state, they are ready to do anything possible to prevent free, fair and peaceful elections there on March 28th and April 11th. By targeting opposition members and supporters, as well as their families, the anarchists will be hoping to trigger chaos and truncate the elections in the state. This is their plan, hence we are calling on the security agencies to act fast to fish out the killers in Rivers before they decimate the ranks of the opposition and scuttle the elections,” the party said.

It said the killings in Rivers are placed in the context of the accusation by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, that the Jonathan administration was training snipers secretly while 1,000 Nigerians have been placed on a watch-list. It will be logical to conclude that the increasingly-fascist Jonathan administration may have finally unleashed the snipers on the opposition.

The party said, however, that President Goodluck Jonathan bears the ultimate responsibility, especially because of his constitutional role of ensuring the security and welfare of the citizens.

“A President who has said severally that his ambition is not worth the blood of any Nigerian must not keep quiet when innocent opposition members are being killed anywhere in the country,” it said.