With only seven months left in his term, Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike announced the hiring of 14,000 political advisers. Reactions have since begun.
The hiring of the political advisers on Tuesday sparked outrage from a sociopolitical organisation, One-on-One-Network, who said that the action was "a ploy towards unleashing political bloodshed in Rivers State ahead of the 2023 general elections."
The governor of the state, Mr. Wike, also appointed 319 ward liaison officers and 40 local government area liaison officers in addition to the 14, 000 advisers for the various political units in the state.
A statement made available to the press by the director general of One-on-One-Network, Love God Nweze in Port Harcourt, said Governor Wike had by the appointment ‘weaponised political violence ahead of the 2023 general elections by recruiting alleged renowned thugs and cultists as advisers’.
The DG pointed out that the appointment of the over 14,000 political advisers was part of a larger plan and in furtherance of last week's pronouncement of Executive Order 21 by the governor which has already set up a chain of condemnable activities to emasculate and strangulate perceived political opponents.
The group called on President Muhammadu Buhari, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), international communities, civil society organisations and others to call the Rivers State governor to order in order not to set the state ablaze.
Nweze further appealed to security and law enforcement agencies to shun Wike’s entreaties to compromise by weaponizing them as tools and agents for a political witch hunt even as he urged them to beam their searchlights on this wave of banditry and merchants of violence disguised as 14,319 recruits being primed to be unleashed on the political landscape.