Human Rights Activist, Ann-Kio Briggs, has said Governor of Rivers State, Siminalaya Fubara and the people of the state are being held hostage.
Ann-Kio Briggs said the hostage was because of an agreement Fubara had with the Rivers State’s immediate former governor, Nyesom Wike.
Mrs. Briggs noted that Wike bought governorship nomination for Fubara.
She added that Wike was also instrumental in seeing that the other 13 persons that bought the nomination forms gave up their ambition for Fubara in line with the political geographical consideration in the state.
Speaking in an interview with Arise TV on Thursday, Mrs. Briggs regretted that the people of Rivers State are the ones suffering the effect of the political battle between the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Wike and Governor Fubara.
“When the story broke last year that the governor of River State, Governor Siminalaya Fubara was going to be impeached, it came as a shock to the people of River State. I think it came as a shock to the governor because he kept asking, what have I done? Now stepping back from that, because we were in shock, but now a lot of stories have come out and the first claim is that the former governor is responsible for the emergence of the present governor, Governor Siminalaya Fubara, which is not untrue.
“But one human being cannot make one person a governor of a state, that mathematically is not right. Everybody has one vote. Now what the former governor of River State did and which he accepted that he did, that he bought 14 forms for 14 persons of which Siminalay Fubara was one of them. At some stage everybody else was told to drop their ambition for Siminalay Fubara. Now there is a political dichotomy in River State and that’s why Siminalay Fubara who is from a particular ethnic group was given the ticket. We have an upland riverine dichotomy in River State,” she said.
Briggs continued, “Whatever may have transpired between the former governor and the present governor is not the problem of River’s people because we did not go into that agreement as the former governor calls it or understanding with the present governor and the former governor.
“Now we have become, along with the present governor, the victims, the state itself is now held hostage along with the people of River State, along with the governor of River State and every other person who is in the present governor’s cabinet. And so we are definitely not in agreement with whatever that is going on.”