|
BNW |
|
B N W: Biafra Nigeria World News |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Stop the carnage in Rivers State
SIR: We have been studying the lingering crisis rocking metropolitan Port Harcourt and its neighbouring cities in Rivers State for weeks, where no fewer than 100 people have been victims of gruesome murder and about 6,000 others rendered homeless in the unbridled bloodletting by rival cult groups namely: Niger Delta Peoples Frontier Force and the Ateke-Tom-led cult gang.
Just recently, a member of the Niger Delta Peoples Frontier Force disclosed from his hideout that his group was responsible for the recent onslaughts, claiming that the action was a fight-back to government's support for the rival gang (Ateke-Tom-led cult gang) which he alleged to have chased away the Okrika people from their ancestral home and destroyed several property while government merely pay lip-service to the matter rather than rehabilitating the people and provide general amnesty for those involved in the fracas.
Government on its part blamed the resurgences on bandits which it claimed had been attacking Rivers State from neighbouring states. With the way the event is unfolding, the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) believes that there is more to the issue than meets the eyes.
We are bothered that the governor of the state, Dr. Peter Odili, who has been so much celebrated as a man of the people with a firm grip over his subjects, has found it so difficult to find a permanent solution to the persisting hostilities in his domain.
While we are not laying claim to knowing the real cause of these skirmishes, we strongly believe that it is better for the government of Dr. Odili to, as a matter of urgency, commence investigation into the crisis from within before looking across the border. It is also disheartening that the Federal Government of Nigeria which was so swift in dismantling democratic structures in Plateau State and unilaterally imposed a state of emergency in defiance to provisions in the Nigerian Constitution over similar issues, is not showing much interest in the Rivers situation.
The inability of both the Federal and the Rivers State governments to put under check the ongoing crisis is a pointer to the fact that the security situation under the present administration remains ever porous. Little wonder that killers of notable Nigerians and political bigwigs like the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Chief Bola Ige, Aminosari Dikibo, Harry Marshal, Andrew Agom, Mr. And Mrs. Barnabas Igwe, Odunayo Olagbaju among others are yet to be nabbed..
Adewale Molade,
Good president
SIR: President Olusegun Obasanjo recently said that he would rather be a good president than be a good man. There is hardly any distinction between the two human qualities.
If however, our President wishes to be a good President, he should listen more to the yearnings of the embattled poverty-stricken people, shed his dictatorial and retaliatory disposition, show compassion to the suffering federal public corporation pensioners and demonstrate more humility.
Nigerians look forward to this positive transformation in the next three years of our beleaguered democracy.
Victor Ifedi,
Lagos
|
|
||||||||||||
