By Suleiman Anyalewechi
The adopted political party of the suspended Governor of Rivers State, Sir Siminalayi Fubara, the All Peoples Party APP, on Thursday, August, 7, 2025, formally signaled its intention to shun the Rivers State Council polls.
The Source reports that the Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission RSIEC has fixed August 30, 2025, for the conduct of a fresh election to select new officials for the State’s 23 Local Government Areas .
It will be recalled that the Supreme Court had, earlier this year, while ruling on the consolidated suits on the Rivers State crisis, nullified the earlier polls conducted by Governor Fubara on October 5, 2024.
The Court had also sacked all the elected Council officials ,and subsequently ordered a fresh exercise.
The APP, which surprisingly was chosen by the supporters of Governor Fubara as their platform for the polls, clinched all but, two of the 23 Councils during the 2024 elections.
But while speaking on Thursday, the Chairman of the APP in Rivers State , Sunny Wokekoro, stated that the decision to boycott the election was informed by a directive to that effect from the National Headquarters of the party in Abuja, and the Inter-Party Advisory Council, IPAC .
According to him, the party’s national body and that of IPAC had advised all political parties to keep their distance from the planned Local Council Election..
He, however, insisted on the pre-eminence of the party in the State despite its decision to boycott the exercise.
” Much as we have decided to boycott the election, we still remain a force to reckon with in the political space of Rivers state .
“Of course, everybody was a witness to how we recorded a landslide victory during the annulled October 5, 2024, Local Government election.
“Make no mistake about it, our present disposition does not, in anyway, imply the end of the party in the State”, the APP chairman noted .
However, there are strong insinuations that the party may be preparing to challenge the conduct of the election immediately after the exercise, based on what insider sources believe is a gross violation of the 2022 Electoral Act by the RSIEC.
In fact, this medium gathered that many aggrieved parties and their followers have, particularly, faulted the decision of the RSIEC to ignore the mandatory three months notice to parties before the conduct of the election .
The Commission only issued a month notice , having informed the parties about the August 30 date just two weeks ago.
Several other parties , including the Coalition’s platform the African Democratic Congress ADC, are said to most likely follow the APP’s example to boycott the polls.
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