Tag: Governor Nyesom Wike
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Photos from ongoing Rivers election rerun
Governor Wike casting vote at Ward 9, Unit 7, Obio-Akpor LGA Hon Evans on the Queue to vote at Ward 1 Unit 6, Ogu/Bolo LGA Hon. Evans voting at Ward 1, Unit 6, Ogu/Bolo LGA. Senator George Sekibo addressing newsmen after casting his vote at Ward 2, Ogu/Bolo LGA. Election ongoing at Ward 7, Unit 7, Oyigo LGA. – By May Ubeku on Twitter -
Rivers Bloodbath: Wike ban Okada in 4 LGAs, orders security clampdown
Worried by recent spate of killings and cult-related violence in Rivers State, Governor, Nyesom Ezenwo Wike has ordered an indefinite 15-hour daily ban on the operation of commercial motorcyclists, popularly called ‘Okada’.
The four local government areas include: Abua/Odual, Ahoada East, Ahoada West and Ogba/Egbema /Ndoni (ONELGA).
Okada operators, by the order announced on Sunday morning by Simeon Nwakaudu, a media aide, “are prohibited from operating between 5pm and 8am daily in four local government areas of the state for security reasons.”
It would be recalled that armed gangs have been on rampage in parts of the state, including Omoku, headquarters of Ogba-Ndoni-Egbema LGA (ONELGA) and hometown of PDP chairman in the state, Bro Felix Obuah.
The ONELGA headquarters witnessed at least a dozen deaths during the weekend owing to the activities of the deadly cult gangs in the area.
The statement stated, “Governor Wike has directed security agencies to enforce the ban.
“The governor regrets any inconveniences the ban will cause residents, businesses and commercial motorcyclists in these local government areas.
“He, however, called on all stakeholders in the mentioned local government areas to cooperate with the state government and security agencies to improve the security situation in their communities,” Nwakaudu added.
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Rivers tribunal judgement, an embarrassment – Mimiko
Ondo State Governor, Olusegun Mimiko has criticised the judgment of the Rivers State Election Petition Tribunal which nullified the victory of Governor Nyesom Wike.
The tribunal sitting in Abuja on Saturday sacked the Rivers State Governor of the PDP and ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission to conduct fresh election in the state in the next three months.
Mimiko, who is also the Chairman, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Governor’s Forum faulted the three-man tribunal on the grounds that its judgment was too hasty as it came less than 48 hours that both parties submitted their written addresses.
He added that the tribunal did not wait for the judgment of the Supreme Court over the issue of its jurisdiction before passing the judgment.
He said, “Our mindset is that tribunal judgment can go either way, but the Rivers own is particularly embarrassing. We all know the circumstances surrounding the Rivers State tribunal. You recall now that for unjustifiable course that tribunal was not allowed to sit in Port Harcourt, it was taken to Abuja, and somewhere along the line the chairman of the Tribunal got changed.
“Now we challenge the jurisdiction of the Tribunal and it has gotten to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court will give judgement in the next few days. The Abuja Tribunal continues to sit. On Thursday, nine written addresses were adopted.
“The adoption of the written addresses was done at 1pm on Thursday. In the course of that trial, the litigants; both plaintiffs and defendants called more than 100 witnesses, documents that were presented as exhibits were more than 1,000.
“We are talking of more than 100 witnesses and 1,000 documents were admitted, we are talking of nine written addresses. None of the addresses were less than 40 pages.
“The adoption was on Thursday, around 1pm and Friday around 2pm, barely under 24 hours, notice had been issued that judgement was ready, that judgment was given on Saturday. This sequence and turn of event assault the sensibilities of lawyers that really believe in justice.”
“Remember the issue of jurisdiction which is fundamental is bound to give judgment this week. The question is why could the tribunal not have waited? Wait for the Supreme Court judgment which would naturally impact on their own outcome. Let the Supreme Court rules that they do not have jurisdiction ab initio.”
He expressed confidence that the PDP would get favourable judgement at the appeal court.
Mimiko said the party would soon meet to deliberate and take position on the election matter.
“However, if elections are held 100 times in Rivers State, PDP will still win, it is PDP’s territory,” Mimiko said.
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Lame
Among his many acts of notoriety in recent memory, Nyesom Wike’s more memorable absurdity concerned the judiciary. Not the recent shellacking from the tribunal at the weekend. Of course, it was a major one as it signals the beginning of the end of an infamy.
The story concerns a visit to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He was not an august visitor, and very curiously he kept it a secret that he was not welcome into that majestic vault of justice. But as things sometimes happen in the comic flow of Nigerian politics, it burst into the open air.
His excuse? That he wanted to pay a visit to the supreme man of law in the country without any form of notification. This column lashed out at him, and noted that he lacked the wisdom, savoir-faire and temperament to be governor.
He knew he had a case in court. His so-called election as governor was under adjudication by officers under the control of the man. Yet he tried to sneak a visit on him.
A man who did not understand the obstacle of conflict of interest in such high office as governor was a small foot in a large shoe. But how could we blame him? Under his former boss and President Goodluck Jonathan, he wrote the script of recklessness. He was in cahoots with Mama Peace to turn the state into a classic swath of anarchy, undermining the governor, supporting gangsters, whipping up tribal antipathy and stoking the flames of blood and death.
When April 11 came, this column knew that it was going to be a difficult proposition to witness an election. A nightmarish parody of it alone stood tall in the imagination of expectation.
Barely four hours into the polls, I placed calls to persons I knew lived in town, some journalists and others conscientious observers. “This is not an election,” said one of them in horror. “It is war.” “I have never seen anything like this in my life,” said another. “How did Nigeria turn this way?” asked a third.
The facts were confirmed by many news reports. Yet, when the Independent National Electoral Commission amassed its data, it affirmed Wike as governor. That was the tragedy of it. The law, as we know it, allowed Attahiru Jega to declare as legitimate what was palpably evil. The devil wore the toga of saint and the heavens said amen.
For all his heroics and defiance of the Jonathan crowd, Jega actually presided over a flawed system. It is a pity that he appended his signature to the bloodstained victories. He pled helplessness. He could not contradict the resident electoral officers or their subordinates.
But as a moral being, I expect him to have raised a righteous voice over the permissiveness of our law. He should have told us that the law has made many saints devil and vice versa. He should have explained his constraints. He should have come out as an exemplar of complaint about a law that sanctified the wrong while the right sulked in silence. He had often said the right thing was to go to tribunals. We experienced this during the Anambra State governorship poll. If he kept mute in office, he should have screamed out of it.
It left all those who know the truth to wonder aloud in a parody of Shylock in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, “Is that the law?”
It took the court, not the electoral process, to tell the truth about Wike and his false victory. Meanwhile Wike had taken over office and inaugurated a regime of revanchism. He wanted Amaechi’s head. He had to dig up something, set up a committee, rile his predecessor with whom he was friend and partner, and on whose back he rose and the same back he stabbed.
Knowing that Amaechi no longer had immunity, Wike launched an attack of impunity with a view to unearthing impurity. Whose impurity? Wike’s or Amaechi’s? The goal was to anoint himself and send Amaechi to hell. Hell also meant he would not be minister. Well, he has stumbled twice. Within a week, he has failed to win in legislature and judiciary. Amaechi’s ministerial screening is going well in the Senate and Wike just lost his gubernatorial dreams in the court. That means he may be kicked out of the executive soon. Montesquieu’s theory of separation of powers seems to be on song. The three branches seem to be working in partnership to decouple Wike and his wiles from the seat of power.
A few fireworks rang through the media waves in the wake of the tribunal verdict. Wike is appealing, and he would fight the battle to the end. So he now knows the value of rule of law. He should have asked his supporters to do so on April 11, and the result, whichever way it went, would have been clear to all. “To obey is better than sacrifice,” said the good book. We have gone through a lot of sacrifice to get here. Many have died, confidence in our system shaken, lots of resources splurged that should go to somewhere else.
It seemed victory is about to repeat itself. In the case of Amaechi, one Owu chief said his case had K-leg. I think citizens with knocked knee are good looking and they should have caviled at the man for a slur about their physical condition. Any way, justice and law loved the lineament of K-leg and it won the beauty contest. Hence Amaechi became governor.
Peterside Dakaku, the APC candidate, may well be the second coming of the beauty contest. He has won round won. Once the bikini contest is over, we shall know that both contestants have nothing to hide from the crowns of their heads to the soles of their feet. And the winner will waltz gracefully to the crown.
It may then be a sort of invocation of the title of one of the great works of short fiction by Flannery O’connor: “The lame shall enter first.” First can be defined in two ways. It could mean the lame shall enter first before the whole enters. Which means the moral lameness of Wike enters first, so a whole Dakuku’s whole enters later. The first, as Christ said, shall be the last. The second interpretation may be the lame shall enter first, meaning the top position. The lame here could stand for the oppressed in the same the way OBJ described Amaechi’s K-leg. In either case, it’s Dakuku’s hope. So will Wike cope?
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PDP, DSS and election matters
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n a syndicated publication in several newspapers and prime-time news-reports in the electronic media, a group known as the Public Interest Lawyers League, accused the Department of State Security (DSS) of intimidating, coercing and detaining vital witnesses of the Rivers State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal sitting at Abuja.
Earlier, the same group of lawyers had accused the DSS of harassing the Akwa-Ibom Resident Electoral Commissioner, Austin Okojie so that he will acquiesce in the execution of an alleged plot to deny the PDP the governorship seat in the state. Of course, not to be left out in this DSS-bashing game is a group of senators and members of the House of Representatives from Rivers State under the auspices of Rivers State Caucus, National Assembly, led by Senator George Sekibo (PDP, Rivers South-East Senatorial District), who claim that the secret service is being used to arm-twist the hands of the electoral tribunal hearing the petition against Governor Nyesom Wike.
A single thread that runs through their protests is the unsubstantiated claim that the All Progressives Congress (APC) has elicited the services of the DSS as a manipulative and arm-twisting tool to reclaim the governorship seats from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Akwa-Ibom and Rivers states.
In a press statement signed by Abdul Mahmud and Mathew Jibril, President and Executive Director respectively, the Public Interest Lawyers criticized the DSS over what it described as “certain hideous occurrences, outside of the courtroom, that portend clear and present danger to the ends of justice in the election dispute”.
Similarly, the group claims that the allegations against Okojie “were inappropriate and the APC had no right to conclude that the man’s actions (Okojie) were criminal without any proven evidence”. Given these protestations, the pertinent question remains: Are these protests being driven by political considerations or genuine concerns for the promotion of justice in election matters?
It would appear that the protestations from these groups with regard to the activities of the DSS in election matters border not only on ignorance but on the need to ensure that INEC officials and PDP members accused of the promotion or commission of violent crimes during the governorship elections in Akwa-Ibom and Rivers States are not tried and punished.
These critics of DSS activities do not seem to appreciate the fact that the same activities by INEC officials could lead to two different outcomes – the one, electoral; and the other, criminal. For instance, the non-release of election result sheets by a resident electoral commissioner to the polling centres and booths as required by the electoral law could lead to the distorted outcome of the result of an election, as well as the maiming and killing of voters arising from the violent disruption of election proceedings. In this circumstance, are the police or the DSS expected to keep hands at akimbo and allow injustice to prevail?
Now, it must be mischievously absurd to suggest that the investigation of a resident electoral commissioner whose activities wittingly or unwittingly led to the death of innocent voters on Election Day is tantamount to the police or the DSS interfering in an electoral matter before an election tribunal or the courts.
The truth of the matter is that while election tribunals and the courts are meant to redress distorted election results arising from the manipulation of an election process – rigging, the police and the DSS are required by law to investigate, arrest and prosecute all those, including INEC officials, whose actions engendered crises and violent crimes in the electoral process.
And there is no law that I know in this country or elsewhere in the world which says that election tribunals and security agencies cannot carry out their different constitutional responsibilities in election matters, simultaneously.
From the benefit of the appraisals just made above regarding the different outcomes – electoral and criminal – that could manifest, for instance, from the single action of a resident electoral commissioner, it becomes clear that almost all the groups or interests using the media to demonize the DSS and its operatives over the election matters in Akwa-Ibom and Rivers states are simply crying wolf where there is none.
In the light of what we know about the killings on the day of the governorship election in Akwa-Ibom State allegedly arising from the actions or inactions of the resident electoral commissioner, what do we make of the ranting of the Public Interest Lawyers League that the DSS has been unduly harassing Okojie because of “the interest of the ruling All Progressives Congress in Akwa-Ibom’s natural resources”?
Similarly, in the light of the reported widespread violent crimes and killings that graced the Rivers State governorship election, can any rational mind take seriously the moronic insinuations by the Rivers State Caucus, National Assembly, led by Senator Sekibo that “they have witnessed the modus operandi of the DSS and have come to the conclusion that what’s happening can be best described as dictatorship in a democratic regime”?
No matter what anybody might like to say to the contrary, the Public Interest Lawyers League and the Rivers State Caucus, National Assembly, among others, are just the public arrow-head of the hierarchy of the corrupt and discredited past PDP henchmen in Akwa-Ibom and Rivers states.
Their strategy is to cry foul and sound alarmist in order to embarrass the Buhari Presidency in the hope of getting it to interfere and obstruct the DSS from carrying out its constitutional duty to Nigeria regarding the atrocities that were committed by INEC officials, – high and low – in Akwa-Ibom and Rivers states during the 2015 general elections that led to the death of innocent voters.
The members of these groups are no democrats interested in protecting the peoples’ mandate. They are simply the fronts for PDP politicians in Akwa-Ibom and Rivers states interested only in protecting their anticipated loot and underserved privileges they hope to reap and enjoy over the next four years if the PDP governments of Emmanuel Udom and Nyesom Wike are given the oxygen of life by the election tribunals.
Nigerians must, therefore, resist these characters masquerading as public do-gooders for the peoples of Akwa-Ibom and Rivers states by extending their undiluted support to the DSS in its crackdown and investigation of Okojie and Mrs. Gesila Khan, the Rivers State Resident Electoral Commissioner, with regard to their activities during the 2015 general elections that reportedly led to the death of innocent voters.
After all, there is nothing special about INEC officials to warrant their being treated with kid gloves or as persons above the laws of Nigeria. The DSS must, therefore, continue its investigation of the activities of INEC officials in Akwa-Ibom and Rivers states, whether or not they are witnesses in the petitions filed at the election tribunals.
There is no known law in Nigeria, including the Electoral Act that precludes the DSS from doing its work because suspects in the cases its operatives are handling are witnesses in matters before election tribunals and the courts.
- Nkemjika, is Co-author of “Oil Exploration in Northern Nigeria: Problems and Prospects”.
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Tears for Wike
[dropcap]J[/dropcap]ust like his Ekiti counterpart, Governor Nyesom Wike is one of the few people in Nigerian politics who should not be burdened with high office. His handling of the task of education minister was such a scandal that it was obvious that GEJ – no superior himself – had thrust an illiterate in charge of churning out persons of letters. He might have gone to school and evinced a measure of articulation. But his is education without culture. That was why Leo Tolstoy launched a campaign “to educate the educated.”
His latest iniquity was a parody of Jesus when he promised to come back like a thief in the night. Wike decided to do his own in broad daylight. He paid two shameless visits to the Chief Justice of the Federation, Mahmoud Muhammed. The CJN understood the integrity of his office and the compromise that the governor’s call implied for the promise of justice in the land. He promptly made it public.
Wike quickly clutched at straws to defend himself. He said he wanted to discuss the state of Rivers State renewal of the acting chief judge position. He said he was not there to influence the man over the ongoing case between him and Peterside Dakuku on the governor poll.
As they say in my village, “talk another thing.” Does he know he is governor? Does he know that a governor should understand what is called conflict of interest? If, as he claims in his release, that he belongs to the body of benchers, who taught him law and how roguish were his teachers? Did he not know what due process was? Why did he have to visit twice and fail before he knew what he should have done in the first place? That is, write a letter.
If he did not understand it, the CJN knows. He knows that corruption charges have hung over the judiciary in matters of election adjudication. If Wike (clumsily spelt Wilke in his own advertorial) did not know that, then he should not be in that position. Due process, especially in matters of justice, is sacrosanct. Tears for Wike!
He stated that he visited the CJN as “a member of the Body of Benchers.” So was it not Wike the governor who visited but Wike the member of body of benchers. The letter he eventually wrote, was it written as a member of the Body of Benchers or as governor?
On what authority does a member of the Body of Benchers go to the CJN to resolve issues about the chief judge of Rivers State? He can’t answer these questions without exposing his mediocrity and lack of goodwill for the law.
In any decent society, Wike would quit his perch as governor. But the man who acted as a boor as minister and irritant now as governor does not know better than harass and threaten journalists in advertorials over his own wrongdoing.