A Criminal is on the Loose

There is something about Governor Alamieyeseigha’s great escape from London that just doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t read right. It doesn’t smell right. And it certainly doesn’t taste right. That an accused who is under British legal jurisdiction can just walk away without arousing suspicion is baffling; that an accused can just board a transatlantic flight without the Nigerian and British immigration and security services knowing about it is simply perplexing to me and to a great many others.

When the news got to me that Alamieyeseigha had “jumped bail,” I simply laughed. Then I was dispirited. I shook my head in disbelief and laughed some more. How? How could this have happened? Here we are, preaching against corruption and bad leadership and they just let him walk? My first inclination is simply that there is just no way London and Abuja could have been unaware of what happened. It is simply inconceivable to me that he could have escaped — dressed as a woman or as pig or as skunk — without the connivance or assent of London and Abuja.

If Alamieyeseigha can pull this off then any Jihadist or any religious or political zealot can walk in and out of the UK without rippling the water. Alamieyeseigha made a fool of the British legal institutions. They were caught with their pants down. There is a smelly rat in the house folks! This is just a shame; shameful to think that all the talks and all the puffing and huffing against corruption and corrupt practices has come to naught.

At the appropriate hour time will reveal it all. Time is the keeper of all secrets. Time is not a respecter of any human. And Alamieyeseigha’s time will come when all things shall be revealed. Time will reveal what happened. Time will tell us who all the players and the characters are. Time will reveal their motives and their payoffs. And in all of these, my tears are not so much for Nigeria, but for my people, the Ijaws. This son of Babel, this fugitive called Alamieyeseigha has shamed us, embarrassed us, and soiled our collective reputation.

There are the Ijaws who are happy that Alamieyeseigha was able to pull off this great escape. They are and have always been suspicious of the Nigerian State and of President Obasanjo. They speak of double standards and of marginalization and of years of thievery and hooliganism on the part of successive Nigerian elites. They point to Ibrahim Babangida & Friends, Umaru Dikko & The Mafia, The Abacha Family, Anthony Anennih & Family, Obasanjo & Family and countless others who have wantonly committed all manner of crimes against the people and against the Nigerian State. Where is the justice, they ask.

For this group of Ijaws therefore, this is payback time. And so they line the streets and sing his praises. But they are mistaken. They made a mistaken! It is a mistake of historical proportion to think or believe that because we have thieves in Kaduna, Minna, Kano, Port Harcourt, Ilorin and elsewhere that we (the Ijaws) too much behave in such despicable manner. For heavens sake we are the Ijaws. There is no need to jubilate and or celebrate Alamieyeseigha’s flight of infirmity. As Professor Joseph Ebiware said:

“The jubilant may be mostly those in the villages who have no clue of the extent to which Alamieyeseigha looted the funds belonging to them, thus condemning them to the current untold misery and want that is their lot…I find it prudent to call Alamieyeseigha to order before crying foul about what Obasanjo did and did not do. It is nauseating, therefore, to read the tacky propositions that Ijaws should “stick together and speak one voice” to challenge the “injustice done to our son”. No. I disagree. Again, prudence dictates that we first save ourselves from our son, the one with numerous-size drills with which he has continued to poke holes on our ship to drown us all…”

Those who are celebrating Alamieyeseigha are mostly collateral-bastards, impudent-fools; men and women with follies etched in the core of their essence. How and why one celebrates criminality is simply beyond the wits of right thinking Ijaws who generally loathe crooks and thieves and vagabonds. Deep in the belly of the Niger Delta, they lived a “pure” life until men like Diepreye Alamieyeseigha and his band of brothers came along. To be sure, Alamieyeseigha was not the first. But Alamieyeseigha, much like Ibrahim Babangida, Umaru Dikko and Sani Abacha took corruption to a new height. These men opened the flood gate of economic and political iniquities.

A very small minority stands and sits and walks in the middle. They do so either because they are not aware of the facts or they simply do not know what they should have known, which is that Diepreye Solomon Peter Alamieyeseigha is a sick man.

They don’t know it yet; but this is a thoroughly sick man. Sickened by his insatiability and immoderations; sickened by his hubris and impudence; and sickened by his ignorance and foolishness. He is a man without character and without conscience. Otherwise, he never would have milked his own people. He never would have exploited the poor and the weak. He never would have stole from his ancestral home. But those are exactly what and who he is (as only a thief and a political-bastard would engage in such acts against his own people).

But why jump bail (if indeed he jumped bail without the connivance of Abuja and London)? What manner of a man would jump bail and imperil the life, the trust, the confidence and the property of those who guaranteed his presence in British Court? The opportunity was there for him to clear his name, but he instead muddied it some more. He kept railing against Obasanjo for doing him in, but now he has nailed his own coffin. He kept using the resource control fight as the reason Abuja was bent on drowning him, but he himself has now jumped into the ocean without a life jacket.

He did everything only a guilty man would do. He did everything only an imbecile would do. He had the opportunity to make amends, but he instead committed more felonious acts.

And now that he is felon, a fugitive, he must be hounded and brought to justice. First, he should be impeached and then prosecuted and made to lose his ill-gotten wealth (which must then be returned to Bayelsa State). If he keeps running from the law, well then, let loose some hound dogs on his trail. How far can he go, how far he can run? Wherever he may be hiding — on treetops, waterways, swamps, and mud houses, tributaries, farmlan

ds and in huts and hamlets — he must be smoked out and prosecuted according to the laws of the nation. Alamieyeseigha is a fugitive, an international fugitive who is wanted at home and abroad! A felon has never ruled Ijawland. Never! Alamieyeseigha must not be the first.

Watch out folks, a dangerous fugitive is on the loose…