OPINION

Before they chase us out of River State

By Odimegwu Onwumere

The raging political crises in Rivers State take 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.