Senator Magnus Abe, the Rivers State governorship candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the March 18 elections, has decided to withdraw his petition from the elections tribunal, which challenged the election’s outcome.
This decision was made in consultation with the party’s hierarchy at the state and national levels, and Abe shared this information with party leaders in the Rivers State capital on Sunday.
Abe had previously expressed support for the tribunal’s relocation from Port Harcourt to Abuja.
He said, “Having made a very clear review of the situation and what is happening in the state, I’ve decided in consultation with the party at the state and national that I withdraw my petition at the election petition tribunal”
According to him, the decision was taken in the interest, “first, of those who have suffered and laboured so much in this politics in support of our course, more importantly in the interest of our state, so that we begin to reduce the bickering and confusion in the state in order to give us all an opportunity to be able to move forward with our lives.
“I take this decision, very conscious of the pains, the trauma, of the confusion it will bring to a lot of you who wanted that opportunity to present your pains before the public in a court of law so the court have the opportunity to decide what happened to us here in the state (Rivers) whether it was good or bad.
“That would have been our joy and we were committed and determined to bring that to past but at the end of the day, politics is not a single person’s sport. It is a team sport and playing with members of your team, you take decisions such as we have in the wider interest of the entire team and not to satisfy anyone person or individual.
“I know a lot of you will be very pained or may be very upset by this decision, but I say to you the interest of all of us overrides the interests of anyone of us.”
In response to Governor Nyesom Wike’s criticism of his support for the relocation of the election tribunal to Abuja, Abe stated that it was Wike and the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state who were de-marketing Rivers by attacking the opposition and compromising the electoral process to gain an unfair advantage.
He argued that he had only spoken the truth about the unstable situation in Rivers under Wike.