The immediate Director General of NIMASA and former Member of the House of Representatives, Dr. Dakuku Adol Peterside, has asked Governor Nyesom Wike to release Dr Farah Dagogo within the next 48 hours
Dagogo is currently the lawmaker representing the Bonny/Degema Federal Constituency on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Peterside, a one-time gubernatorial candidate of the APC said Wike should release the lawmaker from detention immediately and unconditionally.
In a statement which was copied to the Port Harcourt Telegraph, Peterside said, “Hon. Dagogo’s arrest has no locus standi in any known Nigerian Law or Statue, including the Miscellaneous Offences Act.”
He described the Rivers Governor as a “neo-fascist” and a “dictator desperate to gag free speech and democratic rights.”
The former gubernatorial candidate observed that the police erred in executing the arrest without a known court warrant of arrest.
Peterside vowed that Rivers people would not allow Wike to prosper in his quest to turn the state into an Italy of Benito Mussolini or Adolf Hitler’s Germany.
According to him, “Rivers State cannot become an Italy of Benito Mussolini, or Adolf Hitler’s Germany where fascism and dictatorship contracted an evil marriage of convenience that bestrode and muzzled free speech and fundamental rights of citizens.
“What Wike is working at is to annex every independent mind and cow every Rivers citizen into sheepish acquiescence.
“But what he plays ignorant of is that from the times of Dappa Biriye, Melford Okilo, Obi Wali, TImothy Birabi, all nationalists and democrats, Rivers had never suffered fools to muzzle them.
“So, we shall keep to that historic attitude and would never surrender to Wike and his goons.”
Challenging the Rivers Governor to show proof linking Farah to the incident which occurred, Peterside alleged he has not been sincere in the past in the way he has purportedly handled issues affecting high profile Rivers citizens.
“Wike had lied at several times such that these days his claims must be subjected to forensic investigation.
So, Rivers people need know how he proved Dagogo’s link to whatever happened at their party Secretariat”, Dakuku declared.
“Wike has 48 hours”, the former federal lawmaker stated, “to ensure that Honourable Farah is set free and allowed to continue to pursue his political aspiration.”
“Nothing short of that shall avail. Wike cannot be junketing in pursuit of his presidential ambition” while “gagging another’s on the altar of ego. He must let Dagogo go”, Peterside added.