Rivers police arrest nine over fake registration

Rivers State police, on Friday, confirmed the arrest of nine suspects in a hotel with some items suspected to be scam machines.
The state Police Public Relations Officer, Mohammed Ahmed, said the nine suspects were arrested in a hotel in Elele on a tip-off.
He said the nine of them confessed to being a “syndicate of internet scammers trying to break into code.”
Meanwhile, both the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are accusing each other of attempting to surreptitiously register people, using the fake machines.
The PDP on Friday denied involvement in any illegal registration that led to the arrest of seven boys with Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) machines and registration materials.
The seven boys were said to have indulged in the criminal act of registering people in an unnamed hotel in Elele.
A statement from the office of the chairman of the party, Felix Obuah, described as false and misleading, the linking of its members to the incident by a member of the APC in Ikwerre Local Government Area, Mr. Chidi Wihioka.
The party believes that the allegation against it and the purported illegal registration was orchestrated by Wihioka and the APC to portray it in a bad light, knowing that their campaign deceits and lies have been exposed and the people have vowed to reject them in the coming elections.
The PDP urged Wihioka to come to equity with clean hands by accounting for billions of naira he mismanaged when he served as Chairman of the Rivers State Road Rehabilitation Committee, before making false accusations against members of the party.
The party called on the police to investigate the matter and unravel those behind the sleazy deal.
Reacting, APC said that for PDP to react to this even before these boys were arrested simply shows that “they have a hand in it. We must commend the security organ that arrested these enemies of our state and democracy in general and plead with them to ensure that these boys are duly prosecuted, and avoid any overture from PDP in this regard, being their usual strategy.”
Chief Eze Chukwuemeka Eze, the media assistant to the chairman of APC, Dr Davies Ikanya, said: “We know and we have been shouting that the era of rigging by any means is gone in Rivers State but these diehard riggers will never accept this fact. As they say, bad habit is hardly disposed off.
“Go back through some of the releases of Obuah-led PDP to read their acceptance that they specialise in rigging elections and one will not be shocked that they may have developed this new tactics to install themselves in powers, seeing that they have no chance to survive in any free, fair and decent election in Rivers State.
“As you know, PDP is dead and buried as exhibited by some of their colleagues that took their casket with their corpse to demonstrate at their national secretariat at Abuja about two days ago! For avoidance of doubt, let us reiterate once again that we have no hand in this as we are busy mobilising all Rivers people to get registered and obtain their PVCs to assist us to formally dismantle and bury whatever is the remaining of this dead party in Rivers State come 2015.
“A party whose leadership hates our state with passion and ready to do anything to ruin our economy for giving them the highest number of votes at the 2011 elections. Finally, we wish to urge PDP to allow peace to reign in the state and stop further shameful acts that have put our state in bad light before the international community,” Eze said in a statement.