In the wee hours of Monday, suspected hoodlums raided the Social Democratic Party, or SDP, office in Rivers State’s Tai Local Government Area.
Magnus Abe, the SDP’s candidate for governor, confirmed this in a press conference held in Port Harcourt. He also accused the PDP leadership in Tai LGA of planning the attack under the guise of carrying out executive orders 21 and 22 of the state government.
Abe claims that when the party learned of the incident, they were getting ready to greet him in Tai where he was scheduled to speak to party members and officially commission the office.
He said: “It was shocking to us when we started receiving reports that the leadership of PDP met and said that Senator Abe cannot come to Tai and that no office of the SDP can be opened in Tai.
“It was a thing of shock we started getting reports last night that thugs were being amassed at the local government council secretariat and in the early hours of this morning, they attacked the secretariat (SDP) with gunshots, sporadic gunfire, with armed men and all sorts of dangerous weapons, vandalized the secretariat, scattered everything. The canopies and stage that have been set for us to come there and open the place were destroyed.”
The SDP candidate, however, vowed that he cannot be intimated by such action.
According to him, ” no amount of thuggery and violence can stop me from going anywhere in Rivers State to share my message of hope.”