•Dakuku Peterside, APC, Governorship candidate: escaped gun shots, bombs

Dr. Dakuku Peterside, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, represented by Mr. Okorie Asita, his running mate in the forthcoming governorship election in Rivers State, visited the wife of the late Cpl. Ifeanyi Okorie on Saturday in Port Harcourt, the capital city of the state, to commiserate with her and her children.

The late Ifeanyi Okorie was killed on 18 February by gunmen who stormed the Okrika, Rivers venue of the APC governorship rally shooting sporadically at the crowd after earlier detonating explosives at the entrance of the venue. A journalist also nearly lost his life in the incident.

Okrika is the hometown of Nigeria’s First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan.

Leading a delegation to the home of the late policeman, Asita told bereaved Mrs. Gift Ifeanyi, to take solace in the fact that her husband died for democracy stressing that the APC party never thought that opponents would hire thugs to disrupt APC rally in Okrika, leading to the death of the policeman.

“Your husband laid down his life for the sake of peace in this country and for our sake. We did not expect this to happen, we had gone to other Local Government Areas to campaign and we never had this ugly experience.

“As you are mourning, all of us are crying as we owe him a depth of gratitude because it could have been any of us if he was not there,” he said adding that as a people, the party had come to assure the family that they were not alone in pain.

“Your husband laid down his life defending democracy, he died fighting to maintain peace, he died securing us and we cannot forget that in a hurry,” he told the widow.

Peterside said the party had seen the little children Okorie left behind, adding that, “we are all parents here, so we understand the pressure his death would expose you to.”

National School field venue of a previous APC rally in Okrika was attacked with grenades

He said that children needed their parents, not just their parents’ money and they needed their parents to be alive and answer their questions in life.

“Children always want to live like their parents; they feel their parents know it all, so they ask all manner of questions.

“Your husband laid down his life defending democracy, he died fighting to maintain peace, he died securing us and we cannot forget that in a hurry.”

Peterside said the death of Okorie would not stop the children from realizing their destiny as they would benefit from the state government’s scholarship.
Gift thanked the delegates for visiting and appreciating the pains she would face raising four children.