By Nimi Thom-Manuel
When you go on a vengeance on someone you might never know what is in stock for you at the end of the day. God said “vengeance is mine, I will recompense”. Since after the 2015 elections Rt. Han. Rotimi Amaechi had been on a vengeful and suicidal mission targeted primarily on Gov. Wike of Rivers State and by extension on Rivers people.
The mission crystallizing to wrest power from Wike and to make Rivers State, a failed one where unrest will perpetually pervade throughout the state for as long as Wike is on the reigns of power. For close to four years Amaechi would breeze into Rivers State and drop one political arsenal or the other, causing agitations and commotions wherever he went. Even in the church he had been known to drop some.
When the ban on politics was lifted, whilst PDP, the more disciplined and cohesive party was organizing its primaries according to the stipulated guidelines by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, the APC in Rivers State on the hand went into utter confusion. The state was nearly tom into shreds. What went on in that party at that time is best left for another article in this paper.
The high court judge handed down a heavy and unsavoury verdict that Rivers State APC does not have candidates representing the party for the 2019 general elections. According to him (the Judge) this is “as a result of their (APC’s) stupidity and that they cannot benefit from it”. This was when Rivers State electoral woes took another turn. Amaechi’s animosity for Gov. Wike and Rivers State went fever pitch. He could not control himself. He sought to do something even if to destabilize the state. Power they say is the most beautiful commodity in the world. It intusticates. Amaechi thought it unilaterarily not consulting any member of the party in the state nor those at the National level to circumvent the court order to do some despicable things that had no rhyme or reason. That verdict by the court could have put Amaechi in hermit’s shell – that is to steer clear of the 2019 general elections and plan for future elections or at best to see how he could gather the pieces left of the APC. This was not an option for him.
With such mercurial character Amaechi had really brought Rivers State to its ruins. In one of his campaign addresses he chanted a war song for APC followers to use in dealing with Wike and the PDP in the state. Also he made other incendiary rhetoric’s calculated to overheat the polity. He was like a bull in a china shop, scattering the party he and other well meaning members had built in one fell swoop. There were several infantile and toxic moves he made to scuttle the elections but those moves only showcased the deficit in tactics and the vacuity of strategy.
First of all Czar Amaechi and his cohorts trumped up charges against Wike to disqualify him from the contest. That did not work. Next he constantly made an iceberg of misinformation’s on the developmental strides made by Wike in the state, claiming that they were his (Amaechi’s) projects. This did not hold water either. He even gave huge sums of tax payers money to some undiscerning elders to protest against Wike. That ploy was also a sham.
The most ludicrous of them all was when Amaechi with no consultation with any member of his party went shopping for an alliance with a political party in the state so as to have a foothold in Rivers polity because he had lost it all. He went through the whole gamut of them all but none could give him that privilege or pleasure because he is well known to carry the big stick to flagellate any uncompromising politician. Finally he succeeded in making a pact with a party that could not have had any footing in any political setting even in the land of the pygmies of the Kalahari Desert just two days before the general elections most laughable.
The modus operadi he presaged that will win the elections for him would be to militarize the polity and snatch electoral materials at the polling units.
People were chased out of the polling units by the military and electoral materials carted away. As a result of this many died and others sustained serious injuries. This could not bring him the political fortunes he had been so desirous to achieve.
Even this plot could not pull off as the so called Deputy Governorship candidate of that inconsequential party had to distance himself from such infantile and most perfidious arrangement.
Mrs. Ngeye Otobo whom I talked to showed me a bullet hole on a pillar of her father’s house, fired by a military man which narrowly missed a Youngman. That could have been another fatality added to the many already recorded.
Another Youngman, Mr. James Idaeri complained of his camera smashed by a uniformed soldier. Many more tales of woe abounded throughout those elections.
There is no moral equivalency to what Amaechi had done to Rivers people in these elections. He had over-drawn on his goodwill political account in the state. He cannot therefore dictate the pace of the political direction thought of Rivers people. They know better now Democracy is all about choices. Amaechi succeeded in keeping APC members in Rivers State in chattel slavery. He made their political choices for them. What a pity! Amaechi must admit to himself that he can no longer control the lever of political power anywhere in the state. He must therefore dredge up all animosities he has for Wike and Rivers people so that he can live peacefully in the state whenever he chooses to come back after his national assignments. Amaechi got it all too wrong. The DNA of Rivers State is that it is all PDP and will remain so ad infinitum. PDP is umbilically connected with Niger Delta and so Rivers People must vote PDP all the time, whether elections are conducted a million times over. Wike’s political machine will win again and again.
Those senseless and implacable activities of Amaechi had only brought such social immiserations in Rivers State – loss of lives, people got maimed, some still suffering from their bullet wounds. Is it worth it? I may ask Amaechi. This is the time to have a rethink or else he might just have put the death nail on his political career and will be given persona non-grata in Rivers State if he does not makes amends with Rivers People. Like the Turkish slogan, O! Great Wike, we vow that we will march unhesitatingly along the road you opened, towards the goal you showed”. Bravo Governor Wike. We are for you any day!
