Photos
of some Nigerians who allegedly participated in the purported rigging
of the Rivers-Rerun election have been uploaded and their identities
unveiled.
An investigation by Saharareporters has unmasked the identities of collaborators who played roles in leaked intercepted telephone calls that revealed Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State
discussing the rigging of recent legislative elections in the state by
officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) who
had collected bribes from him.
An investigation showed that the first person to come on the
telephone call to Governor Wike was Dumnamene Dekor, a former Deputy
Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly. During the rerun election
that took place two Saturdays ago, Mr. Dekor ran as the candidate of
the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to represent Khana/Gokhana Federal
constituency in the House of Representatives. However, he lost to a
candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
In the intercepted telephone call, Governor Wike addresses Mr.
Dekor as “Dum Dekor.” The former Deputy Speaker was the one heard in the
telephone conversation talking about moving INEC materials to a “Rack
Center.” He, however, complained about intimidation by security
agencies, a complaint that so infuriated Governor Wike that he
threatened to kill the INEC officers he had bribed to facilitate rigging
in the election.
An investigator of the online news platform also found out that the
only female voice in the telephone conversation was Betty Apiafi, a PDP
member of the House of Representatives representing Abua-Odua/Ahoada
East Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives. Ms. Apiafi
could be heard complaining about the lack of funding to bribe more INEC
officers and youths to do Governor Wike’s bidding.
A source in Rivers State disclosed that Ms. Apiafi was handed the
task of offering a N5 million bribe to each electoral officer. In the
leaked conversation with the governor, she complained that she had run
out of money.
Another key player in the telephone call is Owolobi Ofori, aka
“Owoh.” It was learned that Mr. Ofori serves as Governor Wike's domestic
aide. Several sources in Rivers State identified him as the person the
governor entrusts with dirty and sometimes deadly tasks. They added that
Mr. Ofori liaises with gangs and armed cultists in the state, often
taking funds from the governor to them. He and Ms. Apiafi hail from the
same local government of Abua-Odua.
Since SaharaReporters exposed Governor Wike’s audiotaped
conversation, the governor and his aides have been running
helter-skelter in an attempt to deflect attention from the criminal
electoral scandal. He led a protest march to the police headquarters in
Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers State. He later invited a few
bloggers and journalists to a meeting and enlisted them to claim that
the leaked audio was a product of voice altering software.
On its part, INEC has kept mum on the scandal. SaharaReporters
contacted a senior official of the electoral commission in Abuja to ask
about a response to the scandal. The official asked not to be named and
claimed that INEC would look into the scandal when it meets soon to
review the conduct of the election in Rivers State.
Saharareporters learns that the governor’s telephone conversations
include several INEC officials, politicians, government officials and
youth leaders who engaged in violent election rigging in the state.
A six-minute leaked audio revealed how election officials drafted
from Plateau, Anambra and Oyo were bribed in batches as they arrived the
state. Governor Wike threatened to kill some of them led by an INEC
official he referred to as “Shettima” in the leaked audio.
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