The office of the Atiku/Okowa presidential campaign in Rivers State has been sealed off allegedly on the orders of the state government.
Rivers State PDP presidential campaign council confirmed the development on Friday.
It was learnt that the office, located at the GRA axis of Port Harcourt, was sealed off for producing noisy political activities in residential areas without approval from the State government.
Recall that Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers had promised to jail any politician caught flouting Executive Orders 21 and 22, which banned political activities on school premises and residential areas of the state without government approval.
At a project inauguration on Wednesday, Wike said, “Some people put their campaign offices in where people are living. Somebody is coming back to his house, he can’t enter his house. Why, because they are holding political meetings. We say this thing has to be regulated. It has to be in a non-residential area. They say they will not, I say you will. If you dare it without approval, you’ll go to jail.”
However, the media team of the PDP presidential campaign in Rivers said it had applied for approval from the state government but has not received any feedback for several weeks
“The public is hereby informed that the sealed premises had no billboard or poster, since the approval had not been given, yet it was sealed off, a sign that the delay in the approval is premeditated and computed to cause this sort of unlawfulness.
“We condemn this act because it rubs off on our fundamental right to free expression of interest. Furthermore, this egregious move by the Rivers State Government, seen in the prism of politics, tends to militarise our democracy and renders our dear state politically recessive when juxtaposed with other states in the country,” the team said.