Seven months after the Bayelsa gubernatorial election was held, Amnesty
\nInternational (AI) on Wednesday said it would launch an investigation into
\nthe electoral violence that characterised the election which led to loss
\nof lives and also forced\u00a0 600 persons into the Internally Displaced
\nPersons (IDPs) camp in Southern Ijaw.<\/p>\n
The Country Represenatve of AI, Attah Ikide\u200e said this in Abuja during the
\npublic presentation of a report carried out by the Save Ijaw Nation Group
\nentitled; “Unreported\u200e Cases of Human Rights Abuses and 2015\/2016 Bayelsa
\nGovernorship Election Violence”, was presented to AI by the Secretary of
\nthe coalition, Olufemi\u200e Akindele.<\/p>\n
\u200eHe said, “I have not gone through this report but if like he said some of
\nthe pictures that\u00a0 we saw\u200e on the Internet are the pictures in here
\n(report), then this is something that Amnesty International will take
\nseriously.\u200e<\/p>\n
“When you contacted me, I immediately called our United Kingdom office and
\nI informed them that there was a report coming out; what now happens is
\nthat when we have a report like this, we take it to our research unit and
\nthey will look into it and investigate it<\/p>\n
“It’s a long time I saw something like this in Nigeria, but most of the
\ntime why Amnesty will not take \u200eup some of the human rights cases in
\nNigeria is because some of those cases are not well researched, if you
\nlook at this report it is well researched, a lot of pictures in here,
\nwitnesses, evidence, Amnesty needs more of these things.<\/p>\n
“This will be the first comprehensive report Amnesty will be receiving\u200e
\nfrom southern Nigeria, so we are going to take it seriously, I promise you
\nam going to take this to our people in UK, they will engage the Amnesty
\ngroup here,” he said.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Akindele said that having realised that a lot of things were
\nunreported despite the numerous reports made by \u200evictims, and despite the
\nnumerous arrests that was made on the days of the election in December and
\nJanuary,\u00a0 the group took it upon itself to conduct a comprehensive
\ninvestigation\u00a0 on it.<\/p>\n
He said that the report wouldn’t have been necessary if the federal and
\nthe state government have taken a decisive action to forestall further
\nbloodbath in subsequent election.<\/p>\n
Akindele said, “We went back to Bayelsa\u200e state in February and we
\ndiscovered that there are even Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in
\nBayelsa and what was the reason? The communities were not invaded by Boko
\nHaram, nor the conventional Niger Delta militants, we realised that these
\npeople became Displaced as a result of that same election that happened in
\nDecember and January ,<\/p>\n
“We took it upon ourselves and we visited various communities where there
\nwere cases of violence, we had personal interviews, we took phone numbers,
\nwe took pictures and we did practical on- the- spot\u200e assessment of what
\nhappened between December 2015 and January 2016,” he added.<\/p>\n
Akindele stressed\u00a0 that a total number of 200 opposition supporters could
\nnot be accounted for presently several months after the election was held.<\/p>\n
“A lot of reports were made, documented but the State government\u00a0 never
\ntook any action, particularly the Police, the government kept quiet as if
\neverything is normal and we felt it is not going to be in the interest of
\nour democracy for this to continue, not only because there are future
\nelections in the country but because the lives of our people must be name
\nmore important to the aspiration of any politician in this country,” he
\nnoted.<\/p>\n
Akindele emphasised that the president needs to speak up and key it be
\nknown that electoral violence will not be condoned in this country, adding
\nthat his body language matters at this time as it would go a long way in
\ncurbing the trend.<\/p>\n
“We are going to ensure that the documented is presented to every
\nrecognised human rights\u00a0 \u200e organisation in the world like Amnesty
\nInternational, National Human Rights Commission, and other international
\nrights groups,” he assured.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seven months after the Bayelsa gubernatorial election was held, Amnesty International (AI) on Wednesday said it would launch an investigation into the electoral violence that characterised the election which led…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n