Wike alleges governors of Bauchi, Benue, Kano and Plateau states paid N1bn each to fund election violence in the state's rerun election

Rivers state governor, Nyesom Wike, addressed a state broadcast yesterday night where he alleged that governors of Bauchi, Benue, Kano and Plateau States reportedly bankrolled donated one billion Naira each to fund the violence that characterized last Saturday's Legislative rerun election in the state.

"The brazen subversion of our democratic rights that took place on December 2016, was carefully planned and orchestrated by some highly-placed and desperate politicians from the State in concert with the Governors of Bauchi, Benue, Kano and Plateau States, who reportedly bankrolled the plan with the sum of one billion Naira each, at a time they cannot pay salaries of civil servants, let alone embark on development projects in their States. If Rivers people could be visited with such a despicably high degree of violence, mayhem and killings by some renegade military and SARS operatives with impunity just to rescue the dying political fortunes of the All Peoples Congress in a mere legislative re-run elections, then we can now begin to imagine what is likely to happen in the State when the political stakes would be very much higher in 2019"he said