THE CITIZEN can exclusively report
that the election materials meant for the state were detained by the officer in
charge of the Wuse Divisional Police Station.
As a confirmation of THE CITIZEN
report yesterday on the ward congress in Enugu, the election materials meant
for the Enugu Ward Congress ended up at the Wuse Police Station where the
Chairman of the election committee, AIG Mohammed Abbas (Rtd), took the
materials there on Friday night after collecting them from the PDP’s National
Headquarters, Abuja.
According to a reliable source,
Abbas took the materials to the Police Station for safe custody after he signed
for them from the party headquarters in Wuse because it was late in the night
for him to take them to his house and he did not want to travel by night to
Enugu.
The following morning (Saturday),
the Chairman and other four members of the committee convened at the station as
agreed for the release of the materials.
However, arguments ensued when the
other members of the committee refused that the Chairman should sign for the
items at the Police Station and told him to instead allow the committee
Secretary, Alhaji Usman Shehu, to sign for the materials.
It was learnt that the Chairman,
Abbas, told the other members of the committee that he was the one entitled to
sign for the materials at the Police Station as he had previously signed for
them at the party headquarters and he was the one that deposited them with the
Police on Friday night.
It was gathered that Abbas sensed
danger when strange faces he suspected to be political thugs trooped into the
station in numbers, and he therefore instructed the Divisional Police Officer,
Mr. Usen not to release the materials until further notice.
“The Enugu materials are trapped at
the Wuse Police Station since Friday and anyone saying that there was an election
is not saying the truth. The Committee Chairman, Mr. Abbas deposited the
materials on Friday night when he felt that was the safest way to protect the
materials until the following morning when he and other members of the
committee will reconvene and move down to Enugu in a chartered flight”, the
source explained.
“But problem started when the
members gathered at the police station the next morning as earlier agreed to
collect the materials and go to Enugu. First the other members challenged the
chairman that he was not the right person to be in custody of the materials.
They urged him to hand them over to Alhaji Usman Shehu who is the Secretary to
the committee but Abbas refused to accede to the request.
“As they were arguing on who should
be the rightful keeper of the materials at the police station, strange faces
suspected to be political thugs started arriving the station in droves. But the
chairman felt that the materials will no longer be safe if the Police release
them to him and based on the suspicion that other members of his committee were
up to something, he declined to sign for the materials,” the source added.
It was further gathered that Abbas
said that since there was no police escort provided by the PDP Headquarters to
accompany him and the materials to the airport, he could not sign for them as
he could no longer guarantee the safety of the materials.
It was further learnt that all
efforts by the other four committee members to force the Police to release the
materials to them failed as the DPO insisted that they were not the ones that
deposited the materials in the first place, so they could not sign for them.
“The argument lasted from that
morning till 5pm when the Chairman left the station; so the Enugu Ward Congress
materials are still detained in the station,” the source expounded.
When THE CITIZEN contacted the Force
Headquarters Spokesman, Commissioner of Police, Emmanuel Ojukwu last night, he
confirmed the incident but stated that the Police would release materials on
the condition that the committee members agree on the rightful person to take
custody of the materials.
All efforts made to reach Chief
Olisa Metuh, the spokesman of the PDP before press time failed.
Meanwhile, indications emerged on
Sunday that President Goodluck Jonathan will meet with the Enugu State
Governor, Sullivan Chime, and the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, at
the Presidential Villa Abuja, midweek to intervene and resolve the political
differences between the duo before it affects the political fortunes of the
party in the state in the forthcoming general elections.
The meeting is said to be coming on
the heels of recent face-off between the duo on who should be in control of the
party’s structure in the state. It was further gathered that leaders of the
party in the South East have advised the President to quickly intervene in the
matter to avoid it snowballing into an uncontrollable situation that might also
affect the interest of the President in 2015.
Their political differences stem
from who picks the ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the Enugu
West Senatorial District at the forthcoming senatorial primaries.
Source: www.citizenng.com
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