The All Progressives Congress says some of its members and supporters have been marked for assassination ahead of the March 28 presidential election.
The APC National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said in a statement on Wednesday that already the younger brother of Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, was attacked in his campus room and hacked with a machete.
The party said the killing of nine APC members in two separate incidents in Rivers on Saturday night raises a very serious concern about the motive of the killings.
It said the fact that all those killed, including five at the D-Line of Port Harcourt and four along the Eastern By-Pass in the Marine Base near the state capital, were members of the APC, is a clear indication that the killings may have been politically-motivated.
The statement added, “Also worrisome, is the freaky attack on Chidi Adi Amaechi, the younger brother of Rivers Governor Rotimi Amaechi, who is a student of Igbinedion University in Benin, by machete-wielding young men who stormed his room in the early hours of Wednesday (March 11th, 2015) and inflicted injuries on his head and arms. Chidi is currently being treated at an undisclosed hospital.
“It is difficult to see these attacks as a mere happenstance against the backdrop of the ceaseless attacks on APC members and supporters in the Okrika council area of the state, where the opposition has been the victim of at least three bomb attacks, and the hate messages being purveyed by Dame Patience Jonathan, who hails from Okrika.
“We know that because they have no answer to the runaway popularity of our party in the state, they are ready to do anything possible to prevent free, fair and peaceful elections there on March 28 and April 11.
“By targeting opposition members and supporters, as well as their families, the anarchists will be hoping to trigger chaos and truncate the elections in the state. This is their plan, hence we are calling on the security agencies to act fast to fish out the killers in Rivers before they decimate the ranks of the opposition and scuttle the elections.”
The APC said the killings gave credence to allegations by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2013 that the President Goodluck Jonathan administration had trained snipers secretly.
The party said it was possible that the trained snipers were being used to kill APC members.
