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Strange Tunes
from Bayelsa
Diepreye Alamieyeseigha,
has a unique opportunity to hedge his name in gold. As the first
civilian governor of Bayelsa, one of the states created by the regime
of General Sani Abacha in1995, this young gentleman had the world
to beat to elevate the state from its pristine nature engendered
by years of despoliation of its environment. In spite of vast black
gold stuck to its coasts, many years of indiscriminate exploration
only left the people’s rich farmlands and streams in utter shreds.
Worse the people became poorer and merely watched helplessly as
the foreign multinationals and their Nigerian marionettes reaped
bountifully from the oil resources in their backyards. The continued
exploitation became revolting to the people and later threw up a
Moses, the late Isaac Boroh who galvanised his people for liberation
with a clarion call for a Niger Delta Republic. Although Boroh’s
forces collapsed under superior fire power of the federal forces,
his ideas has continued to germinate in the region. His Izon kith
and kin have taken a cue from there by giving birth to Egbesu and
also dusted up the Niger Delta Volunteer Force, as part of the processes
to rekindle their resistance to the move to condemn their people
to prolonged savagery. The people are resolved to give everything
including their lives to this struggle.
The recent
mayhem at Odi on the orders of President Olusegun Obasanjo reinforces
this feeling. Alamieyeseigha is obviously conscious of the aspiration
of his people and has along with other governors in the South south
been championing the need for his people to control their resources.
But recent allegations of financial impropriety involving billions
of Naira which has pitched the Bayelsa governor and Speaker is hardly
anything to cheer. In fact Alamieyesiegha holds his people and the
country an explanation on the weight of allegations of financial
wrong doing published in last week’s edition of The Source magazine.
What is perhaps a cause for worry is the resort to bombing of the
House of Assembly by persons said to acting at the instance of the
governor in order to scuttle the impeachment moves against Alamiesieyegha.
These are strange tunes which continues to strengthen my fears about
the survival of the present civilian dispensation.
Taken together
with governors who prefer to dance owambe in London, it is definitely
a cause for worry. Many governors appear to be mining gold while
leaving their people in abject penury. A source close to the Aso
Rock Villa, Abuja says what has been stacked away by governors,
ministers and other senior government officials in two years is
already more than what Abacha was said to have put in foreign accounts
in his over four year rule. Tinubu’s Inquisition Titi Salam’s “My
Encounter with Governor Tinubu” published in the National Interest
penultimate Sunday provided a very interesting reading. Salam painted
the gory story of how she and another colleague were arrested for
distributing leaflets critical of the recent sack of some Lagos
state workers including their leader, Ayodele Akele. After the duo
were brutalised by men said to work for the Task Force and hirelings
of the Alliance of Democracy AD, merely for exercising their freedom
of expression, they were brought before Tinubu at his guest house
on Isaac John Street, Ikeja for mock trial. Why the governor decided
to preside over this semblance of a guillotine for the culprits,
paraded for allegedly disturbing public peace, is not too clear
but tantamount to transforming himself into another court. This
is definitely a strange practice. And coming from a man who’s said
to have oiled the engine of the National Democratic Coalition, NADECO,
the organisation that was the vanguard of the struggle against the
dictatorship of General Sani Abacha, it is an irony. How could Tinubu
have become so soon a tool for the abridgment of the rights of the
citizenry? Even if the governor’s quarrel was that Salam and her
mate distributed offensive leaflets, on a day (June 4) set aside
to honour late Kudirat Abiola, a woman who fought for freedom on
the streets, the proper place to try offenders is the court and
not the governor’s guest house.
Those who see
the present crop of civilian governors in the mould of military
governors may be right after all. It’s a sad reminder of the celebrated
Amakiri case where a journalist then writing for the Observer, was
given 24 strokes of koboko for reporting a workers’ strike on the
governors birthday at the instance of Alfred Diette Spiff, then
military governor of old Rivers State General Musharraf’s Affront
Although not too surprising, the transmutation of Pakistan’s General
Pervez Musharraf on June 20 to civilian president, is not particularly
heartwarming for a world inching away from the near demise of military
dictatorship. If anything the conspicuous silence of the West to
the idea reinforces the fear that the military option is not entirely
an anathema. It remains a viable option as long as the fundamental
interests of theWest is not threatened. Musharraf who came to power
in October, 1999 sacked the government of Prime Minister Nawar Sharif
on charges of corruption, refusal to call elections, infraction
of democratic rights and the annihilation of the media. I recall
the altercation between some senior journalists and the Pakistani
ambassador at a forum organised by Journalists for Democratic Rights
JODER last year in Lagos, over the likely consequences of the movement
to dictatorship in that country.
I’m sure the
ambassador who put up a brilliant defence in favour of the military
regime back home is wiser. I agree with the late sage, Chief Obafemi
Awolowo that no matter their posturing, even the most benevolent
military regime must not be supported. It was perhaps more interesting
that an ambassador from a country still reeling from the dictatorship
of General Zia Ul Hag could readily cast lot for Musharraf. The
ambassador had accused us of wanting to impose on Pakistan the sins
of our soldiers particularly the civilianisation gamble of General
Sani Abacha.
He no longer
needs a soothsayer to understand that his country is on the threshold
of another dictatorship
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