SENATOR Magnus Abe (Rivers South-East), chairman of the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), was last Sunday reportedly shot by policemen purporting to disperse a rally organised by the Save Rivers Movement in Port Harcourt. The rally itself was yet to begin. In a classic understatement, the police described shooting the organisers of the rally with rubber bullets as using minimum force. There are not many democracies in the world in which a serving senator could be so casually shot and for about a week nothing has happened other than mere investigations. But Nigeria is not an ordinary democracy. Here, perhaps because of constant public buffeting of National Assembly members, legislators have become accustomed to underestimating their own strengths and influence, while Nigerians do not feel obligated to defending their representatives.
But what is even more significant is that President Goodluck Jonathan has not felt it fit to empathise with the victims, show his displeasure, denounce the brutal law enforcement methods used by the police, and order immediate probe. He obviously sees the matter from the partisan perspective. Senator Abe is known to support Rivers State governor, Rotimi Amaechi, who in recent months has become both a thorn in the president’s flesh and his most animated nemesis. Indeed, for the president and his wife, the continuing crisis in Rivers is a very sentimental thing. They have no incentives to be rational about it.
Nearly one week after the unfortunate incident, in which some people including children were injured as trigger-happy and increasingly uncontrollable policemen went berserk in Port Harcourt, the president has not said a word. President Jonathan does not often act presidential, even though he is constantly presented with opportunities to act as one. But in the Senator Abe shooting, he had a sterling opportunity to act presidential for once. But as he is wont, he failed to grab the chance. In his view, and in the estimation of his many hawkish aides, Governor Rotimi has become unnecessarily strident in his opposition to the president, and the governor’s vituperations and excesses needed degrading countermeasures.
The police have defended their scandalous methods. The Commissioner of Police in the state, the nefarious stooge Mbu Joseph Mbu, in an attempt to deflect or evade questions on the reckless shooting, cynically painted a gory picture of the damage live bullets could cause, without acknowledging his men used rubber bullets. Then he added incredulously that the rally organisers did not secure police permit, defiantly ignoring court judgements that reiterated the unconstitutionality of seeking police permits for rallies. More crucially, neither the police nor federal law officers have been struck by the scandal of using brutal force against a rally that was even yet to begin. Obviously conscious of federal backing for their methods in the past one year and more, the police under Mr Mbu have continued to overreach themselves. Senator Abe’s shooting was, therefore, inevitable.
When the Senate resumes, and notwithstanding their stultifying conservatism and indulgent support for the executive, Nigerians should expect some fireworks. They may be timid and devoid of ideology, but they know, as the rest of us, that if they let this indignity pass without having the head of Mr Mbu and perhaps a few other heads on a platter, they would become a byword among the people, shoved and slapped on the street by every miscreant masquerading as a law enforcement officer.
