Thisday: Wike’s Warped War in Rivers

Last Monday marked the first one month
in office of most of the elected persons
during the last general elections. Most of
the governors, celebrated their first thirty
days in office. Governor Nyesom Wike of
Rivers State is among them. In 30 days, so
much has happened in Rivers State, most
of which were expected, given the
character of the activities that preceded
the elections.
Background
Once upon a time, two young men:
Nyesom Wike and Rotimi Amaechi were
friends. They were both typical Port
Harcourt boys. The latter was an early
starter in politics. He soon got into the
orbit of the state’s politics. And with a firm
footing, being a clever player, he pulled
the former into the political circle in the
state. Then, the going was good. Amaechi
rose to become the Speaker of the House
of the Rivers State House of Assembly
from where he supported Wike to become
local Government Chairman of Obi Akpor
LGA in the state.
Then Amaechi in 2007 wanted to be
governor after his eight years as Speaker.
He had a large following comprising Wike
and many others. Some higher powers did
not want Amaechi, so they thwarted his
ambition. But he won’t give up. He
protested legally by seeking the court’s
intervention in his governorship bid. And
that provoked some kind of war in the
state.
Amaechi had to “dodge” from the scene
and temporarily relocated to Ghana from
where the war continued. Wike became
the avante guard of the war, being on
ground. He recently described himself as
the power house of the Amaechi political
front. At the end of the day, the Supreme
Court ruled in Amaechi’s favour and the
latter re-appeared on the scene and was
crowned as the state’s governor.
In recompense for the roles he played,
Amaechi appointed Wike his Chief of Staff.
Somewhere along the line, the duo began
to beat discordant tunes and it was
seeming that there were two captains in
the boat. Between them, the centre was
no longer holding, and things began to pull
apart. That was towards the end of
Amaechi’s first term as governor. In order
to manage the touchy emotions of both
men, Amaechi may have reasoned that his
administration will know greater peace if
Nyesom Wike is sent to Abuja. So he
nominated him as a minster to the former
President Goodluck Jonathan
administration. So Wike became a
minister in Jonathan’s administration.
That act widened the gulf between
Amaechi and Wike, two Ikwerre brothers
(?). Wike soon aligned with Jonathan and
his wife in the dog fight against Amaechi.
In no time, Wike became the foot soldier
of the Jonathans, what with the plots and
intrigues to pull Amaechi down. With so
much federal might (resources, structure
et al) at his disposal, Wike became the
proxy Goliath in the Amaechi-Jonathan
discord.
So much was done to wreck the Amaechi
government. But the latter survived them
all. And that eventually defined Amaechi’s
political alignment, when he eventually
dumped the Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP) for the All Progressives Congress
(APC).
The Battle that followed
The dumping of PDP only worsened the
offensives against Amaechi. The federal
might including the police (remember
Joseph Mbu et al?) were unleashed on
Amaechi. But he managed to survive.
Wike then launched his Grassroots
Democratic Initiative (GDI), the platform
through which he ran a slalom race into
the political contest for the governorship
of Rivers State. Well funded and oiled with
federal “grease” the GDI became a
formidable machine to browbeat every
other contender, believing that the
structure will also deliver the presidency
to former President Jonathan.
Wike later emerged as the PDP
gubernatorial candidate of the party in the
state, despite the ruckus protest of his
fellow contestants that he (Wike) broke all
the rules, breached all the codes to
emerge as the PDP candidate. The
protesters were later “settled”, and they
have kept their cool ever since.
The Election in Rivers
Much before the elections took place,
Rivers State had been sited severally as a
flash point. What happened during the
polls did not disappoint that rating. Rivers
was verily a hotbed. It was a battle ground
for many reasons. Then Governor
Amaechi wanted to prove he was in
control of the political dynamics of Rivers.
But Wike, Felix Obuah and co were also
desperate to prove that Rivers is a PDP
state and would always vote PDP anyday.
The narrative of Amaechi being a bad
brother was hyped. He was seen as a
rebel, one who was siding with a
“stranger” (Muhammadu Buhari) against
his “brother” (Jonathan) in a political
national war; conveniently forgetting that
the same so-called “brother” had denied
him (Amaechi) the rightful headship of the
Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), and
supported a “stranger” (former Governor
David Jang) who did not even win the
contest to emerge as a factional Chairman
of the NGF.
The battle line was then markedly drawn.
State infrastructure including the Police
and soldiers were unleashed on Rivers
State. Political thugs were simply lionized.
Violence including reckless killings and
brazen electoral violations characterized
the elections in Rivers, so much that
election monitors –foreign and local
disapproved of the conduct of the
elections in Rivers, what with many
deaths, thumb printing in police stations,
burning of electoral materials and houses
of targeted politicians, including the
snatching of electoral materials. Even
journalists who wanted to do more than
the conventional election coverage got
bloody noses. The larger majority of
Rivers people saw all the electoral
malfeasance but cared less, as long as it
helped to “shame” Amaechi who thought
he could deliver Rivers to his preferred
“stranger”.
It is remarkable to note that all these took
place under the supervisory and
acquiesced watch of the state’s Resident
Electoral Commission (REC), Mrs. Gesila
Khan, a lady who hails from Bayelsa State
like Jonathan.
The actions were simply powered by the
Machiavellian maxim that the end justifies
the means.
At the end of the election, PDP was
declared winner in both the presidential
and governorship election in the state to
the pain and chagrin of the APC. It is
remarkable that if Jonathan’s PDP won the
presidential election, Amaechi would have
been reduced to a political mince meat.
But Buhari’s victory stopped the crush.
Election Tribunal
As is usual, those not satisfied with the
outcome of any election are advised to
take their case to the election tribunal
instead of taking the laws into their hands
to seek redress. So, the APC took the
matter to the election tribunal,
determined to prove that the election in
the state breached almost all the laws of
electoral contest.. Even that became a
problem. The INEC in the state tried to
frustrate the process.
The PDP in the state had gone to court,
surprisingly, to challenge APC’s decision to
seek redress in the tribunal. It was rather
shocking as it amounted to beating a child
and forbidding the child from crying. The
court, understandably, struck out the
request of the PDP in the state.
Perhaps fearing that the tribunal may not
be freely allowed to sit and examine the
case in Rivers without threats and
intimidation, the election tribunal
relocated to Abuja, largely seen as a
neutral ground. The same reasoning
applied to the case in Akwa-Ibom and
Taraba States.
The case is presently running with the
examination and argument of preliminary
issues.
Wike as Governor
Some people had feared that Wike may
not be inaugurated as governor following
the absence of a Chief Judge in the state,
as a result of the nearly one-year closure
of the Courts in Rivers. But a way was
found around it. The chief judge of
neighbouring Bayelsa State was drafted in
to swear in Wike.
That again offered its own challenge. The
National Judicial Commission (NJC) had
objected to the nomination of a CJ by
former Governor Amaechi. While Amaechi
nominated Justice Peter Ogumagu, the
NJC nominated Justice Daisy Okocha. The
law requires the governor to recommend
a candidate while the NJC ratifies. Not the
other way round. But even after a High
court ruled in March last year, against the
NJC that it had no power to overrule the
nomination of the governor, it yet went
ahead to reject Agumagu, even after he
had been duly cleared by the state’s
House of Assembly and sworn-in by the
governor. And it soon became an ego war
and that caused the stalemate that led to
the shutting of the courts.
So, Wike on his inaugural speech, named
Okocha, believed to be his close ally, as
the new CJ of the state, without recourse
to the NJC as required by the law. And till
now, we have heard no objection from
NJC ,indicating that the body actually got
partisan, under the Jonathan
administration which had a philistinic
effect on most state institutions.
By Wike’s declaration, the courts were
declared open and the people hailed him.
At that, he began a series of actions to
black-veil the Amaechi years and legacies
in the state.
He started with the alarm that Amaechi
looted the Government House. So
laughable was the accusation as Gov
Amaechi was said to have looted virtually
everything in the Government House
including furniture, governor’s insignia, TV
sets, mattresses, pillows, trash cans, and
wait-for-it, doors!!! Doors? Yes, doors! That
Amaechi was so rougish that he even
pulled out the doors of most rooms in the
government House.
The fact that the photograph showing the
way the former governor left the Brick
House was shown did little to silence
Wike’s noise of the ‘massive theft’.
Next, an 8-man committee was set up by
Gov Wike to compile the names of the
non-indigenes in the state’s civil service as
well as business outfits in the state, for
eventual crack down. This is because the
non-indigenes are accused of having
supported former Governor Amaechi in
voting Jonathan out. So they must be
punished. The phase one of the crack
down, according to the “Endangered Non-
Indigenes Forum”, in a petition to
President Buhari calling for his
intervention, will start July 15 with the
sack of the non indigenous civil servants in
the state.
But before that starts, Wike had ordered
the sack of 344 staff members of Rivers
State Polytechnic. Barely two weeks after
he was inaugurated.
This was followed with the recovery of
allegedly stolen government vehicles from
former commissioners who served in the
Amaechi administration. It was fierce.
Desperate to demonise all that concerned
Amaechi, the Wike “taskforce” on the
recovery of government property was said
to have broken into the private residence
of the former Information commissioner,
Mrs Ibim Seminitari, and used a forklift to
remove a Lexus SUV which Seminitari said
was her status car validly and officially
allocated to her, as the practice is. In the
process of forceful removal of the car,
Seminitari’s husband’s private car, a Range
Rover was badly damaged. She said
nobody ever informed her that her
ownership of the car had been revoked
nor was she ever asked to return the car.
“They just broke in and removed the car”,
she lamented.
It is remarkable that at his exit as Chief of
Staff, not only did Wike leave with his
status car, he was said to have left with
other government cars, even as he did
same when he recently resigned as the
Minister of State for Education. One of the
Federal Government cars he left with, is
now being used by a chieftain of the PDP
in the state.
Next was the probe of former Governor
Amaechi. This hardly came as a surprise.
However, if indeed, the sitting governor
feels lost on what transpired in the state,
and there is no explanation about it,
especially as the Amaechi administration
did not co-operate with the transition
committee, a probe could be called. No
question. But the way Gov Wike has gone
about it, with so much bile and bitterness,
betrays the fact that he is merely going to
use the so-called probe panel to work
from the answer to the question.
Amaechi’s government is accused of
selling off several assets of the state
without a trace of the proceeds. In other
words, the probe might be a short cut to
arriving at a pre-determined goal of
tarring the image of Amaechi, with the
ultimate intent of presenting him
unappointable by Buhari.
If the morning tells the day, the signs of
things to come are already getting clear. In
30 days, Governor Wike has approached
his state’s assembly three times for the
request for bank loans totaling N30 billion!
Yes, N30 billion! In one month.
Wike may appear to have won the battle,
but whether he will win the war is not
certain.
All said, the two dramatis personae seem
pitched against each other, with the belief
that in war, all is fair. But it is not true
because if it were so, there will be no
phenomenon as ‘war crimes’.
It is hoped that after all these anti-
Amaechi shenanigans, the Wike
administration will settle down to the real
business of governance, because that is
what will be meaningful to the ordinary
Rivers man or woman or child.
Surely, for some time to come, the
scenario in Rivers State will feed the
political space with refreshing episodes of
crooked power play. www.thisdaylive.com/articles/wike-s-warped-war-in-rivers/213793/

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summary

viceldo:
summary

This summaries the article==>
"All said, the two dramatis personae [ Amaechi and Wike] seem
pitched against each other, with the
belief that in war, all is fair. But it is not true because if it were so, there will be no phenomenon as ‘war crimes’.
It is hoped that after all these anti-
Amaechi shenanigans, the Wike
administration will settle down to the
real business of governance, because that is what will be meaningful to the ordinary Rivers man or woman or child."

Him is this really from thisday Tooo long na