There are fears in Umuobuo village in the Omuma Local Government Area of Rivers State after a young man named Mr. Nwankwoala Udo was shot and stabbed for putting up posters for the Peoples Democratic Party’s Atiku Abubakar in the neighborhood by political thugs who are allegedly working for the state governor, Mr. Nyesom Wike.
The party has fractured after Governor Wike’s loss of the party’s presidential nomination to former Vice President Atiku.
This came in response to accusations made by Wike that Senator Iyorchia Ayu, the PDP’s national chairman, had rigged the election in favor of Atiku, a fellow northerner.
The ownership of a landed property in Port Harcourt that belonged to former Rivers South East Senator Lee Maeba was cancelled last week by the Wike-led Rivers administration.
A few days prior, Wike made fun of Dr. Abiye Sekibo, a former minister of transportation, for taking the position as director general of the state’s PDP Presidential Campaign Council.
Sekibo is unfit to speak on behalf of the state, he had claimed.
On the other hand, a video of the most recent assault that SaharaReporters saw on Monday depicts a young man dressed in white who has been identified as Nwankwoala Udo laying on a hospital bed. Blood was smeared on his clothing.
“Can you imagine, just because of politics, just because of a poster, you want to kill this child? You shot someone with a knife just because of a poster. So callous, you use criminals, cultists, to scare people, and you want to kill this boy because of pasting posters,” a young man said.
Because of Atiku’s campaign ad, some want to kill the youngster. “People are so heartless; if they kill this boy, what will they gain?
This nonsense in Omuma has to stop; it will not end here. How can one person hold everyone in a local government at ransom, buying guns and giving to people to go and kill political opponents because you want to remain in power? If you know that you have your own candidate, campaign for the person openly, not this hide and seek game. Because of your selfish interest, you want to kill everyone.
This nonsense has to end. Every day, people cannot come out to campaign. All these things will end one day. Everything that has a beginning will have an end. If you kill everyone, will only you remain in that local government? People gave you a mandate to go and represent them. Instead of doing so, you are using the same government to fight them and using their money to fight them.
However, a source told SaharaReporters that the thugs who were purportedly Wike’s supporters also macheted three more persons.
According to the source, “Mr. Nwankwoala Udo, from Umuobuo village in Omuma LGA of Rivers State, who was pasting the posters of the PDP Presidential flag-bearer, was shot by Wike’s attack dogs.”
Supporters of Atiku Abubakar, the PDP presidential candidate, claim they were attacked while posting Atiku campaign posters in Omuma LGA, Rivers State, according to a second source.
“Three of the supporters are in the hospital after sustaining machete wounds.”
Earlier, SaharaReporters claimed that Sekibo, Sir Celestine Omehia, a now-derecognized former governor of the state, Rt. Hon. Austin Opara, a former deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, and Senator Lee Maeba, a former senator from the Rivers South-East district, had a falling out with Wike because they sided with Atiku in the 2023 presidential election.
Governor Wike characterized Sekibo as a self-centered politician who, while serving as minister, was unable to bring any sort of democratic dividend to the state, including his hometown of Okrika.
