Rivers CP vows to get killers of PhD scholar who died on election duty

The brutal killing of a doctorate degree scholar on election duty yesterday, March 18, 2023, in Rivers State seems to shake state to its foundations and has made those winning in the elections to remain subdued.

The state’s commissioner of police in charge of election duties, Echeng Echeng, has however vowed to fish out the killers.

In a statement Sunday afternoon signed by the police image maker, Grace Iringe-Koko, says the commissioner has assured of diligent investigation and eventual justice.

Koko said the CP has tasked operatives of the Command to deploy all necessary human and investigative assets to ensure that the killers of the Campaign Director-General for the All Progressives Congress in Ahoada West in Rivers State, Chiosom Lennard, were brought to book.

From information gathered, the Campaign DG was shot by yet to be identified gunmen in the afternoon of Saturday 18th March, 2023.

Lennard was owner of a thriving survey firm in Port Harcourt who was rounding up his doctorate degree programme at the Rivers State University.

He was the lead agent of the Tonye Cole Campaign Council in Ahoada West and was said to have resisted the hijacking of ballot boxes that seemed to be going on around the state soon after voting.

Sources said he was abducted by men wearing police uniforms and was later picked up dead. The killing plus about nine others has set the state on edge with tension rising to high levels.

The Commissioner of Police has however commiserated with family of the bereaved and has promised to bring perpetrators of such heinous crime to justice.

CP says election was peaceful in Woji
Meanwhile, the election supervising CP says the elections in Woji were peaceful. This seems contrary to accounts by residents who vividly narrated how thugs backed by uniformed men believed to be thugs moved round to collect ballot boxes at Woji Town Hall and went away without results being known.

The statement however said the Command wished to confirm that the conduct of the Gubernatorial and State House of Assembly elections in the forty-two polling units in the state was generally successful except at a few polling units in Woji Town Hall and Open Space beside Holy Family Catholic Church, where the police admitted the process was threatened by suspected political thugs during the counting of votes.

Consequently, the statement said, police operatives moved electoral officials and materials to Oginigba, the collation center for Ward 6 Woji, along with party agents. The process was completed peacefully, while the results and INEC officials were allegedly subsequently moved to Obio/Akpor Local Government, where collation is ongoing.

The problem is that voters who never got the results as prescribed by law would not know if the results were in safe hands or not.