Amaechi’s 54 Birthday: The Role of Exemplary Leadership in Governance with Security as a Case Study (Continuation of Part One)

The impacts of the Rivers of Peace Under Amaechi

The results of the peaceful state of Rivers State under the watch of Gov Amaechi has resulted not only attraction of foreign investments but during this period Port Harcourt was the haven of both International and National championships. Apart from hosting one of the best organised National Sports Festival ever in Nigeria, the School Sports was hosted by the State including the Police Games. Port Harcourt apart from Abuja and probably Lagos was the only State to have hosted US-Nigeria bie National Conference. The city during this golden period hosted the Miss ECOWAS Beauty Pageant, Pan African Parliamentary; Garden City Literary Festival, hosted CARNRIV involving several foreign countries to showcase the rich culture, potentials and beauty of her people, the 2nd Dr Claude Ake Memorial Lecture, Rivers State Investment Forum and Governor’s Interactive Session with Rivers State Youths amongst several other meets the city has hosted to prove its acceptability as the most peaceful and progressive city in Nigeria.
Kudos of course must go to Alh, Suleiman Abba the then Commissioner of Police and former Inspector General of Police for his commitment and no nonsense approach to crime in the State; the then Brigade Commander, the Air force Commander, Director of SSS for their commitment in ensuring that Rivers State was recovered from the hands of these hoodlums! Kudos also goes to the then Secretary to the Rivers State Government now a Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Dist. Senator Magnus Abe whose office then was coordinating and spearheading this onslaught against insecurity in the State.

Wike Ans His Own Type of Rivers State

A versatile public commentator, Uche Igwe, a doctoral research fellow at Sussex Centre for the Study of Corruption, University of Sussex, titled “Of Nyesom Wike And President Jonathan’s Conflict Entrepreneurs”, described Wike as ‘a tough and undiplomatic man with a thug-minded determination and a deep-pocket that thrives in a policy of vindictiveness.’Known as Eze Gburugburu by his admirers, the former Chairman of Obio/Akpor Local Government is acclaimed to be a brutal schemer who maximised his position as chief of staff in Brick House to stockpile enormous financial resources for himself. The bulkily framed politician is also someone who understands and believes in the power of money and readily deploys it as a political tool to achieve helpful and, most times, unhelpful political ends. Another former loyalist described him as ‘a merciless politician with a limitless capacity for mischief.

Sam Nda-Isaiah, a frontline APC Presidential candidate and Publisher of Leadership Newspaper, in his reaction to WIke and Jonathan’s absurdity in Rivers State in an article published by TheScoop of August 12, 2013 titled, “Why does the President enjoy the company of gangsters? stated: ‘The Minister of State for Education, Mr Nyesom Wike, who is at the centre of the crisis in Rivers State with the clear support of the President, Goodluck Jonathan, and the co-president, Patience Jonathan, now operates above the law in the state. To worsen the joke, he has even declared for the governorship of the state. It is very hard to believe that a serving minister would make that kind of statement and still be kept in the cabinet by the President. But that has been our lot since Jonathan became President.’ Link: http://www.thescoopng.com/sam-nda-isaiah-why-does-the-president-enjoy-the-company-of-gangsters/

Before and during the March/April 2015 General Elections in Rivers State, it was reported that about 100 members of All Progressives Congress (APC) were slaughtered, with their local secretariats at Andoni and Okirika bombed. The live telecast by Channels TV during the shootings on the APC Rally at Okirika should be very visible on the minds of Nigerians.

During the 2016 rerun elections of April 2016, the APC’s National Working Committee, in a press statement, noted: “APC members in Rivers State are fast becoming [an] endangered species.” That was after scores of members were killed in recent weeks. The committee released a list of 32 party members it claimed had been killed by a variety of methods: “several were beheaded, others clubbed to death and one man burned alive.”

Till date, under the watch of Governor Wike, about 200 Rivers State citizens have been killed.

Kennedy Friday, a social commentator, in one of his presentations then Stated thus: “They were killed and beheaded in Ula-Upata community in Ahoada East Local Government Area. After that, their corpses were set ablaze! In this 21st century, this bestiality happens every day in parts of Rivers State, almost unchallenged. Insecurity is at its most rampaging level. Oh God, what is happening to Rivers State? We have this very dire challenge and people look the other way and pretend that all is well. This barbarity happens every day in one part of the state or the other. When will these killings stop?”

In the words of Ibrahim Modibbo, a social commentator based in Abuja: “Not even under the evil and satanic regimes of Mobutu Sese Seko, Emperor Fidel Bokassa or legendary Idi Amin of Uganda did we see such a fascist regime that displays optimum barbarism and primitive parochialism as in Rivers. The state is currently buckling under the full weight of a heartlessly ravenous political brigand, where life has lost its meaning and value. A cabal that swims in obscene opulence has made political power to be so critical to its survival that any opposition that stands on its way, even if it’s a fly, must be crushed with a sledge hammer. I am, therefore, not surprised that opponents are now hunted like a game: with many beheaded, clubbed to death or buried alive like chickens.”

Jimitota Onoyume, Vanguard Newspaper Correspondent, reported on May 17, 2016, how 5 cops, 6 civilians were butchered in Rivers. According to him, “Mortal fear has seized the people of Rivers State since last week when armed marauders murdered five police officers, including a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Muhammadu Halidu, and six civilians at Okobe in Ahoada West Local Government Area. The rampaging gunmen laid ambush for the police officers, attached to the 30 Mobile Police Force, code-named 30 MPF, Bayelsa State, on their way back from a national assignment in Yobe State and stole their rifles, after snuffing the life out of them.”

Reacting to the ugly scenario, Senator Magnus Abe stated: “But the point I want to make is that there are reasons here in Rivers State why we should not and cannot celebrate democracy day. Just yesterday, somewhere in Ahoada, I hear over eight people were killed, including the oldest man in the village. As we speak now, in my own village, boys are going around with guns; nobody slept last night. I was told they even chased somebody to a church, and macheted him right there in a church, with people scampering for safety. As we talk now, in Luawii and Kapnyo, several people are dead, houses burnt... You know, all over... Yesterday, a friend of mine stopped at a fuel station at Rumoula to buy petrol, and while at the filling station, some people brought out guns and robbed everybody, right there in Rumuola. This is what is going on all over Rivers State.

In such circumstances, do we really have much to celebrate? The first responsibility of government is the maintenance of law and order. If people are free and safe, they can look for water, they can look for light, they can look for food. But they cannot look for security if they're not safe. So, I think the governor should really do something to address the issue of security in this state. And until he does that, there is really nothing to celebrate in Rivers State.”

The socio-economic impact of the insecurity challenges

Who else could explain the economic impact of the insecurity situation in Rivers State more than Hon Rotimi Amaechi, who threw light on this while speaking at the Annual Lagos Traffic Radio Lecture Series in Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos. He accused the incumbent Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, of driving away investors from the state due to growing insecurity and crime, which had led to the plunging of the internally generated revenue (IGR), from N8 billion to N4 billion. His words: “Do you know that people are now migrating away from Port Harcourt? When I was the governor of Rivers State, nothing like that happened. The crime rate in the state has now increased and the IGR dropped. As the governor, the IGR of the state was N8 billion. And that was why I have often advised Nigerian public office holders not to play with figures. Due to the crime rate in the state, people have started migrating away from the state and the IGR has dropped to N4 billion. The state governor (Wike) now moves like chairman of a council, asking traders and others if they had paid their taxes. But when I was the governor, I don’t engage in that.”

According to Amaechi, “Migration is either voluntary or involuntary. But in the case of Rivers State, it is involuntary. They are forced to relocate from the state. The man complained that I am corrupt. But I have asked him to go to court but until today, he is yet to bring evidence forward to buttress his claims.”

Solutions

1. Chief Nyesom Wike-led administration must leave aside its ego and allow reason guide its decisions at this critical point by dusting the Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi era security blueprint for the state, restart its implementation and save everybody from the ongoing needless waste of lives and properties across the State and drop his act of prevarication, stay true to his recent call for peace in the political arena and not toy with the idea of victimizing leaders of the APC who served in the Rt. Hon Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi-led administration in the name of a guided witch-hunt called an investigation.

2. The Governor must convoke a Peace/Security/reconciliation Summit, involving key Christian leaders, traditional rulers, key political leaders, youths and women leaders, security experts and elders from all over the state. The summit will be expected to point out why the state is in its present sad situation and proffer suggestions on the ways out of it, adding that the era of paying lip service to issues of the greatness and future of the state should be ended.

3. The present status of Rivers state as home to the highest number of unemployed youths in Nigeria is not acceptable; hence Wike must revive all the industries that Amaechi set up during his tenure as the governor of Rivers state. These include the Songhai Farm, the Buguma Fish Farm and others that enabled Amaechi to employ over 500,000 youths of Rivers state and create a conducive environment for investors to invest in the State over one million jobs can be created before the end of 2019.

4. Governor Nyesom Wike should assemble key actors that assisted Amaechi during his days as governor of Rivers state, particularly the then Commissioner of Police, now retired IGP, SuleimanAbba; Ade Adeogun, and many others so that we can review and adopt some of the strategies they adopted that totally eradicated crimes and militancy in our state.

5. The governor must invite and reason with most of the key kingpins of militancy and dreaded cultists he has empowered and plead with them to assist the state in her quest for peace.

6. The Governor must dismantle the Abe led propaganda machine against the Honourable Minister of Transportation immediately.

7. The governor should once again read through his state broadcast, particularly the part where he said 'although the present politics of acrimony and bitterness may have strayed from the noble path of the past, I still believe that we shall be better off standing and working together for our state and our people. I hereby direct the Honourable Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice to review all pending criminal proceedings filed against any person by the state and directly related to political activities prior to the 2019 general elections and make appropriate recommendations to me for necessary action to promote reconciliation among us' and advise himself if the setting up of the Justice Monna Danagogo Judicial Commission on Election Violence while exonerating all PDP chieftains to try Tonye Cole, Llyod Chidi and some other APC leaders in areas he failed to win elections in the March/April polls tally with his state broadcast seeking for peace. If Justice Simeon Amadi commission on the invasion and attack on the state’s judicial complex also tallies with the spirit of his State Broadcast.

8. "In the same vein, the Rivers state government set up a probe panel to investigate some Commissioners; Dr Chamberlain Peterside (Finance) and Dr Parker (Health) under Amaechi's administration, I sincerely seek to know if all these steps are part of sustaining peace in Rivers State", he quried.

Conclusion

With what Rt. Hon. Dr. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi did to eradicate every atom of insecurity in Rivers State while holding forte the reins of governance as the Governor of that great State demonstrates nothing but capacity and a leading light as an exemplary leader of our time. This a fact that is no longer in doubt!

Touching on the need to pay an urgent attention to the security situation in the state as the reports going out of Rivers state in the last few years had been most unpleasant, noting that all sincere watchers of events in the state will agree that the turn of events since the advent of the Wike era had been a very sad and gory departure from the peaceful and secure state that the

Amaechi administration ran, noting also that most of the intricate security architecture that the previous administration, under the watch of Amaechi, put in place for the peace and security of the state had been shut down by the Wike government.

In conclusion, the remains that if Wike is wise and interested to curb insecurity in Rivers State what stops him from humbly going to Amaechi for tutorial on how to govern a sophisticated state like Rivers State