Before They Chase Us Out Of Rivers

by Odimegwu Onwumere

The raging political crises in Rivers State takes a different u-turn each
passing day. Many have happened and are still to happen if opinion
leaders, stakeholders and holders of sundry portfolios do not rise up
and send this anarchical approach that some persons have mapped out to
unseat a sitting and an elected governor of Rivers State.

This is why the clarion calls by some individuals and groups telling
Governor Chibuike Amaechi, who is enmeshed in the crises that no
person fights the presidency and survives the fight, is balderdash.
That opinion does not hold water, at all.

The persons and groups were, perhaps, looking at the material
surpluses that Amaechi was going to lose should the inconsiderate and
disadvantageous powers that feel they are fighting him gain their aim
and objective at last. What these persons and groups are yet to reason
is the spiritual association of the fight that Amaechi is fighting.

After all, a man like Nelson Mandela, who was the first African to be
the president of his native country of South-Africa, in the aftermath
of a racial apartheid in which some Europeans imposed on South Africa
that started from 1948 and ended in 1991, didn’t look at his life he
was then to lose, but continued to fight the fight he believed in that
would shape the history of his country.

The fight in Rivers State, which Amaechi is fighting, should not been
seen as his lone fight, but a fight for a true Rivers State, where
there would be ‘less’ imposition of politicians on the people. It is a
fight for truth. This is why it was drivel, the clarion calls by some
meandering toadies of the presidency, telling Amaechi to go beg Mr.
President or resign from the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

Beg him for what? What is actually the misdemeanor that Amaechi
committed against the president? Is it the bloated rumour of vice
president ambition comes 2015? The stoical approach that some
waterfronts in Rivers State, which are well-known to be hideouts for
criminals and people with questionable characters, must be demolished?
What is actually the bone of disputation in fighting Amaechi like a
common criminal? What?

What will save us in Rivers State is to eschew political divides or
interests, sit back, and ask ourselves, what actually the fight is
for. In an interview, which Barrister Ezebunwo Nyesom Wike, the
Minister of State for Education, granted the Saturday Sun, of July 6,
it is imperative to say that the once respected and feared Wike
decided to throw caution to the winds and condescended this low to
fight Amaechi, because according to him, Amaechi was calling him a
‘small boy’.

So, is he now behaving like a ‘small boy’ he was called? Small boys
fight, but elders wage wars. This goes a long way to show that the
estimation of a person should not be about his or her public status,
size or age, but how he or she carries and conducts issues. Therefore,
the alleged Wike-led fights to oust Gov. Amaechi are baloney and
childish.

What have the fights represented? No one gains anything to destablise
his or her homeland for the bouillabaisse of fame. This is unfair. And
it is a clarion call that residents of Rivers State should wake up
against the anomalies or wait to be engulfed in plots of death as many
testimonies have said that there was a plan in London for a protest
against the governor.

Who knows when Hezbollah, the dreaded terrorists group, would be
imported into the state and we would be calling the move, politics as
usual? We must be guided by the tenets of democracy and not by
political linings or who was said wanted to be the Gadhafi of Rivers
State or who does not pay tributes to ‘small boys’, as Wike wants us
to believe of Amaechi.

It was unlawful, the protests against the government in Rivers State,
which have degenerated to those who were supposed to be honourable
members of the House of Assembly, but decided to play the
dishonourable, when there was no tangible misconduct of office by
Amaechi that the traducers and political demagogues could trace to
him. All that they keep on tell us is that he was fighting Mr.
President (they christened his elder brother), who they also have said
that Amaechi was supposed to be protecting.

This is where education of democracy is misinterpreted and given an
erroneous meaning. Since Mr. President is this fervent with democracy,
he should have rejected to be governor when his boss, Alams was ousted
through a controversial money laundering mess. Mr. President should
have said that it was (a fight against his elder brother and the Ijaw
nation). He accepted the governor’s stool and mounted on it without a
blink, without remembering the issue of ‘elder brother’.

Chasing of shadows is associated with kids, but it is very sad that
many adults do just that in the recent times, because of issues only
best known to them. Wike was supposed to be assiduously overseeing the
education ministry that he was appointed to do the job and teach the
younger ones the true meaning of democracy, but here is our ‘learned
gentleman’ applying blunt politics. Who even gave him the permission
to leave his duty for London, where it was alleged that he was
drumming for more and more political wars against the government of
our state?

Such a thing cannot happen in transparent democracies. Wike would have
been fired, because this single act could have been regarded as a
choke in the wheel of progress of his ministry and the future of the
country. Regarding the strength and veracity in his fights against
Amaechi, Wike’s superior at the Education Ministry must have seen and
experienced ‘something’ from him. This is a man who is just Minister
of State for Education, not even Minister for Education.

The residents of Rivers State must drop the lukewarm habit and stop
saying that ‘it concerns’ Gov. Amaechi, before all of us are dropped
dead or chased out of the state. Who are we, the ‘common’ people of
Rivers State, if a mace could be allegedly used indiscriminately to
crack heads in the House? We should not wait and allow persons from
far and near turn Rivers State into complete and downright chaotic
state. They are making us complete bamboozled.

The time is now to repress these unwarranted attacks in the state and
signal Europe to arrest or call for questioning any individual that
has made any un-complimenting comments in that continent, like to
stage a protest against the government of Rivers. Joyfully, European
security agents cannot be bribed in broad daylight. Where is the
Education in the Ministry of Education, which Wike is a minister, if
what we are getting from him are turmoil, instead of educational
edifices and their components?

We must not buy this Education of wars and brigandage, frustration,
victimization against Amaechi, who is perceived to have different
ideologies from what they want to introduce to us; we must not allow
the re-introduction of thugs in Rivers State.

We must know that when we allow them to injure us, we cannot afford to
travel outside the country for treatment like they can easily do with
taxpayers money and call themselves dudes, shakers and makers of the
politics in our state.

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