Human rights activist Ann-Kio Briggs has claimed that Rivers State Governor Siminalayi Fubara and the people of the state are effectively being held hostage.
She attributes this situation to an agreement between Fubara and the state’s former governor, Nyesom Wike.
Briggs explained that Wike played a significant role in securing the governorship nomination for Fubara, even going so far as to purchase nomination forms for him.
She noted that Wike also convinced the other 13 individuals who purchased nomination forms to abandon their ambitions in favor of Fubara, in line with the political geography of the state.
In an interview with Arise TV on Thursday, Briggs lamented that the citizens of Rivers State are suffering due to the ongoing political conflict between Wike, now the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, and Governor Fubara.
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“When the story broke last year that the governor of River State, Governor Siminalaya Fubara was going to be impeached, it came as a shock to the people of River State. I think it came as a shock to the governor because he kept asking, what have I done?
Now stepping back from that, because we were in shock, but now a lot of stories have come out and the first claim is that the former governor is responsible for the emergence of the present governor, Governor Siminalaya Fubara, which is not untrue.
“But one human being cannot make one person a governor of a state, that mathematically is not right. Everybody has one vote. Now what the former governor of River State did and which he accepted that he did, that he bought 14 forms for 14 persons of which Siminalay Fubara was one of them.
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At some stage everybody else was told to drop their ambition for Siminalay Fubara. Now there is a political dichotomy in River State and that’s why Siminalay Fubara who is from a particular ethnic group was given the ticket. We have an upland riverine dichotomy in River State,” she said.
Briggs continued, “Whatever may have transpired between the former governor and the present governor is not the problem of River’s people because we did not go into that agreement as the former governor calls it or understanding with the present governor and the former governor.
“Now we have become, along with the present governor, the victims, the state itself is now held hostage along with the people of River State, along with the governor of River State and every other person who is in the present governor’s cabinet. And so we are definitely not in agreement with whatever that is going on.”
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