Condemnations Trail Police Attack On 13,000 Teachers …As RSG, Rep Fault Mbu

More condemnation have trailed last Wednesday attack by the State Police Command on 13,000 teachers who had assembled at the Elekahia Stadium for collection of their letters of postings.
Media reports said the affected teachers were attacked with teargas canmsters, resulting in a stampede which occasioned bodily harm to their victims.
Rivers State Police Commissioner, Mbu Joseph Mbu was quoted as saying that those assembled at the Stadium were hoodlums and miscreants engaged by the state government to cause a breach of the peace.
Reacting to that claim yesterday, the Chief of Staff, Rivers State Government House, Sir Tony Okocha described as very misleading, Mbu’s account of the unfortunate incident.
Okocha said the  claim by Rivers State Police Commissioner, Mbu Joseph Mbu that the 13,000 teachers asked to converge at the Liberation Stadium last Wednesday for the collection of their posting letters were hired touts and miscreants engaged to embark on protest, was concocted by the police to mislead the public.
The State Commissioner of Police, Mbu Joseph Mbu, had at a press briefing yesterday displayed placards allegedly carried by the 13,000 teachers, whom he described as miscreants.
But Okocha described the action of Mbu as a ploy to mislead the public through lies and fabrication, adding that the Rivers State Government did not have to bandy words with the state police command whose stock-in-trade was to concoct lies at every instance to justify its nefarious actions.
“ Mr Mbu Joseph Mbu, and indeed, the state police command are known to be pathological liars. The case of Archbishop Ignatius Kattey, the Dean of the Anglican Church, whom they claimed to have secured his release from his abductors was a ready example.
“ Mr Mbu is a bad taste, and we urge Rivers people not to be distracted by his many deafening lies,” Sir Okocha remarked.
The chief of staff explained that, “for the records, the 13,000 teachers converged at the Liberation Stadium, Elekahia, to collect their letters of posting to their various duty posts. This fact can be verified by any objective mind”.
In the same token, the action by the men of the Rivers State Police Command which stopped over 13,000 newly recruited teachers from collecting their letters of postings from the Ministry of Education at the Liberation Stadium, Elekahia, Port Harcourt has been condemned.
A statement issued in Port Harcourt by Hon. Dr. Sokonte H. Davies, representing Degema/Bonny Federal Constituency in the National Assembly, described the Police action as shameful and an infringement on the civic rights of the people.
The lawmaker said it was wrong for the police authority in the state to misinterpret activities of the government, adding that such negative actions readily give the impression of a state under siege.
Hon. Davies, who wondered why the police took such an unprogressive step after several announcements by the authority concerned on the exercise, called on the Inspector-General of Police to wade into the matter and take appropriate action.
The statement maintained that the present administration under Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi means well for the people of the state and would continue to advance policies and programmes that would promote the development of the state.
It would be recalled that last Wednesday, the state Education Ministry had directed the newly recruited 13,201 teachers to report to the stadium for their posting letters.
As of 7.30am, most of the teachers were already seated at the stadium waiting for the programme to kick-start by 11am only to be chased out of the stadium by men of the Nigeria Police Force, Rivers State Command.
The new teachers who were chased out of the stadium by the men in uniform lamented seriously over the situation.
One of the teachers, who spoke on condition of anonymity said they were surprised over the attitude of the Nigerian Police.
He stated that the Police would not deter them from appreciating the good works of the Governor of the state, Rt. Hon.Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi that employed them.
The new teachers stated that the political hustlers in the state were trying to destabilise the entire system by trying to undermine the job opportunity provided by the governor of the state.
But in a quick reaction, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, Dr. Richard Ofuru said that the reason for using the Liberation Stadium was because of the huge crowd involved in the exercise. Dr.Ofuru while speaking to newsmen in his office, said that the exercise did not have a political  motive, as politicians were not part of the gathering.
He stated that the ministry even handled more than 16,000 applicants during the interview of the new teachers, stressing his surprise for the barricading of the Liberation Stadium by the police.
The permanent secretary noted that the event was purely a civil service exercise. “You are aware that this recruitment of teachers has been going through processes. There was the first examination, there was an interview, the next stage was the boards clearing them, ensuring that their credentials were authentic. The last stage was what was supposed to take place last Wednesday today.
“There were to get their postings into the various primary, junior secondary and senior secondary schools and knowing the crowd of 13,000 plus was not what some body could gather in the ministry or UBE Board and the Senior Secondary School Board.
“We needed a large space to enable us to finish everything about posting today. You can agree with me that the schools resumed over one week ago and we needed these teachers to go and start their jobs. So we wanted an open ground where they can be segmented into different local government areas and treated once, and for all and the first place we thought about was the Liberation Stadium, that has the capacity to accommodate everybody but unfortunately I was told that police dispersed everybody”, he said.

Newly recruited 13,000 teachers chased out of the Liberation Stadium, where they were billed to collect their appointment letters, Wednesday by men of the Rivers State Police Command. Inset: Anti-riot police vans stationed outside the stadium to abort the ceremony.