SDP Guber Candidate, Abe, Promises to Review Rivers Anti-Cultism Law

Blessing Ibunge in Port Harcourt

To ensure a safe and peaceful state, the governorship candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Rivers State, Senator Magnus Abe, has promised to review the state’s Anti-Cultism Law if elected as governor of the state in March this year.

He said the current Anti-Cultism Law in the state has only succeeded in increasing the number of cult groups existing in the state.

Abe spoke at the 30th Ogoni Day Celebration, recently held at the Birabi Memorial Grammar School (BMGS), Bori, Headquarters of Khana Local Government Area of the state.

According to him, “For years we have been searching for this security in Rivers State and we have been using the same style; buying guns, buying armoured cars, pushing people, passing laws, passing this, passing that. Are we safer? No!

“In 2023 we are going to try something different. We will continue to do the things we have been doing, but we are going to open a new dialogue on security. We are going to review the Anti-Cultism Law, because we have seen that that law has increased the number of cults and has made us more unsafe than it has worked in our favour.

“So, we will review it and be able to do things differently. Let’s try a new approach. So, security is going to be multidimensional, but the social aspect of security.

“We have so many things that we can use to engage our youth, we can engage them with traffic duties, we can engage them with extra moral classes in the communities, we can bring those graduates that are idle at home and pay them something to be going to the schools in the evening to teach the other children.

“How much will that cost the government? Not much, but we will engage both those who are teaching and those who are being taught.

“We are sure that you will get physical instructors. If you look at all the big men that were here today, all of them eat well, drink clean water and they exercise regularly.”

Abe stated that the people of the state will no longer elect leaders who will keep their children overseas while arming children of the poor with guns to kill each other.

The SDP governorship hopeful said: “We are going to do what we have never done before, in the past we voted for other people. In 2023, you must vote for yourself. You must vote for your children; you must vote for what is important to us.

“As Rivers people, we cannot continue to have leaders whose children are in America. But they will call your own children and give them guns to go and attack other Ogoni sons and daughters who have done nothing wrong to them. Are they bringing up your children well? No.

“We need leaders that will treat your children the way they treat their own children that will give to their children the same thing that they are giving to your own children. Those are the kind of leaders we will vote for in 2023.”