The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State, Tonye Cole, has condemned the arrest of three of his lawyers and has filed proceedings at the election petition tribunal to challenge the March 18 governorship election. Cole also alleged that five party support staff were detained by operatives. The lawyers, who were attached to the chambers of Senior Advocate of Nigeria Tuduru Ede, were arrested on Friday night at a hotel where they were lodging in Port Harcourt.
The arrests occurred 48 hours after Cole led the party executive to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) office to protest the commission’s refusal to release Certified True Copies of documents used during the election—documents that would enable the party to proceed to the tribunal. Confirming the arrests to journalists in Port Harcourt on Saturday, Cole described the development as a “rude awakening,” noting that the operatives had taken materials belonging to the lawyers.
Cole recounted the incident: “I was woken up this morning with a frantic call at about 7 a.m. that our lawyers and support staff had been arrested and taken away from the hotel where they lodged. By the time I rushed down to the hotel, they were already gone. I was told they were taken to the Intelligence and Surveillance Unit in Ogbunabali (Port Harcourt). My party agent, our lead counsel, and I went there and were kept for over an hour; we didn’t see them, only to be told they had been transferred to the State Criminal Investigation Department. I have never heard of lawyers preparing a time‑bound petition being arrested. More worrying is that all our evidence was taken away. Now, can we trust that evidence when we get it back? The lawyers were writing their brief before they were taken away. Now the opposition knows exactly what we want to argue. I am in shock.”
Assuring that the arrests would not stand, Cole vowed, “I am not leaving this place today until they are released. These are lawyers legitimately preparing their petitions. We cannot go to the tribunal and tell them we missed the deadline because our lawyers were arrested.” He warned that Rivers State is a special case, adding, “The police cannot continue being used. I feel that the police are being used to scuttle us. We already have evidence of the police being used in the hijack of electoral materials on election day. The Inspector General of Police must call them to order.”
Lead counsel for the APC, Tuduru Ede, SAN, echoed the concerns, stating that it was unheard of for the police to act in this manner. “All of this is a way of scuttling the petitions. They took away all the EC8 papers and copies of election results we have collated from the agents. We are asking that all the arrested persons be released. We believe our stay there was compromised by the hotel staff,” he alleged.
Efforts to contact the spokesperson of the state Police Command, Grace Iringe‑Koko, were unsuccessful; her mobile phone was unreachable, and she had not responded to a text message sent at the time of this report.
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