Gov Wike said the Ijaw youths do not know who they are dealing with. He stated that instead of them coming to peacefully ask what happened, they are issuing an Ultimatum.
Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State has lashed out at the Ijaw National Congress for giving him 48-hour ultimatum to release House of Representatives member, Hon Farah Dagogo.
Dagogo, a federal lawmaker representing Degema/Bonny in the House of Representatives, was allegedly arrested on Governor Wike’s order last week for allegedly disrupting the screening of governorship aspirants of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Port Harcourt.
He was said to have been arrested alongside others and ordered to be remanded in police custody by a magistrate’s court in the state.
The Rivers State governor had earlier declared Dagogo wanted for allegedly ''hiring cultists to attack the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) secretariat in Port Harcourt.”
In a statement titled “Arrest of Hon Farah Dagogo: Political Persecution of An Ijaw Son” and released over the weekend, the Ijaw National Congress through its President, Professor Benjamin Okaba, called for his immediate release from incarceration within 48 hours in the interest of peace, justice and fairness, insisting that the charges leveled against him (Dagogo) were bailable.
“We wish to condemn, in most unequivocal terms, that Hon. Farah Dagogo’s continued detention without conviction in a court of law is a clear violation of his fundamental human rights.
The illegal arrest and detention of Hon. Farah Dagogo, a governorship aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is an orchestrated design by Governor Wike’s administration to persecute the Ijaws who are resolved to come together to contest the governorship of Rivers State. May we ask: when did the constitutionally guaranteed right to contest an election become a crime?
As a former Minister of State in the President Goodluck Jonathan-led federal administration, did the then Rivers State Governor, Chibuike Amaechi, who had become an All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain, threaten or ever arrested and illegally detained Governor Wike even though they were at loggerheads? When did Rivers State become the private empire of Governor Wike that indigenes need permission from him to decide their individual political future?
The INC is particularly miffed at the trumped-up charges against Hon. Farah Dagogo that he hired cultists to disrupt the PDP screening exercise, which was presided over by his governor-colleague, Senator Douye Diri of Bayelsa State.
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