The Rivers State Government on Friday sealed a hotel, bar and a filling station in Port Harcourt, while some people, including staff of the facilities, were arrested.
According to The PUNCH, the facilities sealed are Preray Hotel at Eagle Island, Priscy’s Bar in Elekahia and Mega Tool Filling Station along Ojoto Street in the Diobu axis, all in the Rivers State capital.
This comes days after Governor Nyesom Wike made allegations in a state-wide broadcast that some politicians were enlisting ex-convicts and members of cults in order to destabilize the state in order to advance their 2023 political goals.
Although the reason for the action could not be determined at the time this report was filed, it is rumoured to be a crackdown on deemed political rivals.
It was reported that in the early hours of Friday, a group of security personnel, including police tactical units in multiple patrol vans, assaulted the facilities, made the arrests, and shut the area.
It was gathered that the sealed facilities are owned by loyalists to a former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon Austin Opara.
Opara, a former ally of Wike, is no longer in the latter’s good books for allegedly hobnobbing with the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar.
In a statement by Wike’s media aide, Kelvin Ebiri, the governor said the government was aware that owners of hotels and entertainment centres are in the process of giving out their premises to politicians and political parties as a convenient base for the gathering of “political thugs”.
The statement partly read, “Similarly, we will not allow any political party, be it the All Progressives Congress, the Peoples Democratic Party or the Social Democratic Party to threaten the safety and security of lives and property during the campaigns with mayhem, thuggery or violence.
“Accordingly, we have already alerted and set the security agencies on the trail of these misguided politicians and leaders of political parties and stop them in their tracks with the full weight of the law.”
The governor warned that the government will pull down hotels and other entertainment places that are linked with such criminal political activities.
When contacted, the state Commissioner of Police, Friday Eboka, said he was not aware of the incident saying, “I am just getting to my office. I will find out.”
