Echoes Of A Hidden Agenda …Campaigns Of Insecurity In Rivers

Buhari and Amaechi

When, in his Assets Declaration before the Code of Conduct Bureau, (CCB) President Muhammadu Buhari listed among his assets a plot of land in Port Harcourt, which location he did not know, many Nigerians concluded that it must be a parting gift from former Governor Rotimi Amaechi, who had since jumped ship from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress, after nearly eight years in office.
That gesture also affirmed the very close relationship  Buhari both, as an APC candidate and President shared with former Governor Amaechi. Infact, it was that closeness that must have informed the latter’s choice as Director General (DG) of the APC Presidential campaign, and now Transports Minister.
In his capacity as governor, Amaechi made some pronouncements which could go as vows. They include: over my dead body will Nyesom Wike become Governor of Rivers State? Another was, ‘Rivers people must punish the PDP and its presidential candidate Dr Goodluck Jonathan with our votes”. The third’ I can never hand-over to a man like Nyesom Wike if he mistakenly becomes Governor of Rivers State. But that would never happen”.
In the first instance, Wike became governor. In the second, Jonathan and the PDP won the presidential vote in Rivers and all National Assembly seats, and the third, Amaechi refused to handover to Chief Wike as Governor. Most of what the new government started work with were bits and pieces gathered together from Permanent Secretaries.
President Buhari was presumed to have known all these. So when, during his inaugurals, the new president assured that he belonged to nobody and belonged to all, many Nigerians particularly Rivers people believed that he would not  turn a blind eye to the disturbing examples of impunity Amaechi demonstrated before, during and after 2015 general elections The most worrisome, being Amaechi’s refusal to hand-over to a duly elected governor, declared winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Many had expected a reprimand from the President and Commander-in-Chief, if for nothing else, to prove that he meant it when he said he would belong to none and belong to all. But none came. And all through the post-election litigations, members of Ameachi’s party publicly referred to Wike, a serving governor as “care-taker governor”, certain that the courts world unseat him.
During the period, the major plank of the APC’s protest against the electoral victory of the PDP in Rivers State was insecurity. According to the APC, Rivers had become a killing field that was unsuitable for any saner and civilised activity. Of course, the APC-led Federal Government swallowed that view point. So did the Judiciary.
Accordingly, the Governorship Elections Petitions Tribunal was relocated to   Abuja, where, happenings in Rivers State would be debated.
The Rivers State government pursued its disapproval from the Tribunal all through to the Supreme Court to no avail, as every court upheld the position of the APC, the Appeal Court had powers to decide on the issue.
Strangely, the Rivers APC considered each of those denials by various courts as a victory of sorts and celebrated same in one church or the other, with lavish reception thereafter, in the same Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital that was considered insecure.
In the end, the Supreme Court upheld the election of Governor Wike as declared by the INEC, in the first instance, but the Appeal Court on its part ordered rerun into National and State Assembly Seats. With that decision, Port Harcourt and indeed the entire state suddenly became unsafe again, and so required the military to ensure order, according to the APC. What it rejected in Osun and Ekiti States as opposition party.
To ensure that end, there was a roundly exaggerated picture of insecurity in the state to justify the deployment of soldiers to an ordinarily civilian democratic exercise. And if there was any doubt that the APC intended to use the soldiers for electoral duties, it was doused when Amaechi, the Transport Minister in separate radio and TV interviews threatened to match Wike’s government, man to armed man. He promised to flood the state with more soldiers that had ever been recorded in an election in any state.
As would be expected, the Buhari-led Federal Government obliged Amaechi’s request and flooded the state with armed soldiers whose roles in the rerun elections were most conflicting.
In Khana and Gokana, there were reports that the Secretary to the Rivers State Government, Kenneth Kobani and Commissioner for Environment, Roseline Konya were assaulted and the former detained over-night on the instructions of the soldiers.
But the most bizzarre of the events of the rerun was the drama at the Mile One Police Station in Port Harcourt where, a run-away electoral officer had reappeared with sensitive materials. Television viewers on Satellite Cable TV AIT at first wondered what the Chief of Army Staff was doing at the Police Station with a retinue of soldiers as guards?
It was much later, it became clear that the man viewers saw being followed by armed soldiers was not a Senior Military Officer, but the Transport Minister, Rotimi Amaechi, while, beside him stood the Executive Governor of Rivers State, Chief Nyesom Wike without any armed escorts.
According to electoral guidelines, everyone was expected to limit his or her movement to his or her electoral area. Amaechi, should have voted in Ubima. While those in his team, like the Acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Mrs Ibim Semenitari should be voting in Okrika while the APC candidate in the Governorship elections Dr Dakuku Peterside ought to be in Opobo.
Was the presence of the three in Port Harcourt, accompanied by armed soldiers not in defiance of electoral law? Should soldiers be used for such disobedience of the law as demonstrated by Amaechi’s trip to the Police Station aired on TV? Did that not amount to impunity of the highest order?
Again, Rivers people expected the impartial President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces to condemn the unconstitutional use of soldiers, as clearly shown on cable news network during the Rivers rerun.
That is why many where shocked to hear President Buhari, apparently buying into the post-election campaign of the Rivers APC to declare that the state is the most insecure in the country. As commander-in-Chief, Buhari receives briefs from all sectors of the security community. That pronouncement could not have been a product of such briefing.
For, were it to be so, companies operating in the state would have fled. Instead, the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of the state has risen to N10 billion monthly from five. Night life in Port Harcourt still booms. No attacks on schools, hospitals or any public institution. Infact, private and public institutions are operating in peace.
What Buhari, might not have considered is: “Is APC in Rivers really on ground? Can an Amaechi-led APC win elections as they want Nigerians to believe? Is it possible for a party to rig elections today, where it is not relatively popular?
If it were so easy, former President Jonathan would have won Sokoto, Kaduna, Kano, Borno, Kastina, Adamawa, Niger and Kebbi. But Buhari won those areas because the people were ready to defend their votes.
Why do people now want Buhari to believe that soldiers can win elections for a party not properly rooted in the peoples? Whatever popularity the APC would have enjoyed among Rivers people, it lost through the non-payment of civil servants three months salary arrears by former Governor Amaechi in preference for politics and Governor Wike’s commendable start in government. After his 100 days record, whatever campaign the APC launched, simply ended-up uniting Rivers people.
Rivers Information and Communications Commissioner, Dr Austin Tam-George captured the scenario aptly, when he said every campaign or action by the APC unites Rivers people against, APC leader and former governor, Rotimi Amaechi.
My Agony is that the campaigns that tend to paint Rivers State as the most insecure in the country are intended to secure a state of emergency, so APC can get through the back door, what the people, INEC and the country’s Apex Court rightfully ruled in their disfavour.
Methinks Buhari and the leadership of the APC ought to read in-between the lines that Rivers cannot be turned into an APC state over night, as its members would want outsiders to believe.

Soye Wilson Jamabo