Last Saturday, Federal and State legislative election re-runs took place in my home state, Rivers. Many people gloomily expressed fears beforehand that the exercise would be violent and chaotic; and these fears turned out to be very well-founded. I wasn’t there because I have doggedly avoided my native turf since I was kidnapped in Port Harcourt last year (I have yet to fully recover from the considerable trauma); but I monitored events from afar and was contacted by several witnesses who were on ground from start to finish and heard many truly horrifying stories from, PDP supporters, APC supporters and neutral observers. Dakuku Peterside, the Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime and Safety Agency, NIMASA and former APC gubernatorial candidate, sent me a press release explaining how gun-toting hoodlums had tried to assassinate him.
Kenneth Kobani, the PDP Secretary to the Rivers State Government, told me that he had been unfairly arrested, manhandled and injured by security personnel. Peterside and Kobani were lucky. Other less fortunate individuals wound up dead. Meanwhile, malpractices and irregularities were so rife that elections in a number of Local Government Areas, including my own (Gokana in Ogoniland) were cancelled…which means that a bunch of re-runs will soon have to be re-re-run! What a disgrace! Rivers used to be a civilized place that was once celebrated for a tranquil state capital that was fondly and respectfully known as The Garden City.
Nowadays, its main claim to fame is that it is a tragic and dangerous mess. Will we helpless onlookers ever be able to return to the good old days? Given how deep-seated the poison has become, probably not in my lifetime. An exemplary partnership I thank God that some PDP and APC government officials are mature and altruistic enough to cheerfully cooperate when development issues are at stake, despite the seething hostility that characterizes the relationship between their two parties. Mrs Amina Mohammed, the Minister of Environment, and Dr Roseline Konya, the Rivers State Commissioner of Environment, recently joined hands to work towards the long-awaited implementation of a United Nations Environment Programme Report that recommended, in 2011, the clean-up of Ogoniland, which has suffered greatly from pollution caused by decades of oil exploration and production. These two formidable women of substance give me a much-needed sense of hope.
VANGUARD
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