By Suyi Ayodele
A sad event occurred in Uromi, Edo State last week. Some travellers described as “travelling hunters from the North” were murdered by some felons on the suspicion that the deceased were kidnappers. The whole nation rose to condemn the act.
President Bola Tinubu joined in the condemnation. He said that Nigeria had no room for jungle justice. I laughed. What did President Tinubu do in Rivers State penultimate week? What is his definition of “jungle justice’? Simple dictionary definition of ‘jungle justice’ says “is a form of public extrajudicial killings which can be found in Nigeria, Cameroon, and Bangladesh…”
When President Tinubu summarily executed democracy in Rivers State by sacking the democratically elected governor of the state alongside the entire state legislative arm against the tenets, spirits and letters of the nation’s constitution, what did he call that? What is more jungle justice than that crass decapitation of the Rivers State democratic set-up?
The Abuja scriptwriters on Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State are bad students of drama. My sense of modesty would not allow me to call them illiterate playwrights. But that is exactly what my mind tells me they are!
Nigerians are in for an episodic plot of nonsensical drama. The Abuja buccaneers that are after the blood of Fubara and the political gains of Rivers State in 2027 would stop at nothing. They need everything they can lay their hands on to justify the absurdity of a state of emergency in the oil-rich state. The bad script was written a long time ago. The execution is well-planned out.
The sack of Fubara is an event that will hunt and hurt this administration for a long time to come or until another perfidy unfolds. The dramas unfolding from that state will continue for a long time as the bad scripts keep hitting us. Unfortunately, Abuja is both deaf and dumb, intentionally! Former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan said it all. Abuja is pretending to be asleep. Waking it up to smell the coffee of its missteps in Rivers State is an impossible task!
A Nigerian multi-billionaire once quipped: “Gentlemen, I am not as stupid as I look.” The man of wealth uttered the words to show his close top aides that he could see through their schemes. The old man, a lexicographer in his own corner, needed to let those around him know that it is not every time they tell him ‘Mr. Chairman is always right’, that he believes them!
Nigerians should borrow those words and tell the Abuja dramatists that ‘We (Nigerians) are not as stupid’ as the Abuja hawks want us to look or be! The latest drama on Governor Fubara and his alleged open plan to commit arson and compromise the security of his state as ‘dramatised’ by the ex-Head of Service (HoS) of Rivers State, Dr. George Nwaeke, is one episode that is not adding up to the entire drama of the absurd! The thriller writer James Hadley Chase once penned Believe this, you’ll believe anything.’ That appropriately situates Nwaeke’s drama in Abuja last Friday.
Fixing spies in the enemy’s camp is the pastime of all warriors. It is a tact, a practice, that is as old as the concept of intrigue itself. British foremost Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, while giving the account of the defeat of the Germans in World War II says: “At this time, we had a spy in close touch with Rommel’s headquarters, who gave us accurate information…” (The second World War, Volume III, chapter XIX, page1).
Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel (November 15, 1891 –October 14, 1944) was a German hero of World War I, with the appellation, The Desert Fox. Rommel served in the World War II as the commander of the German 7th Panzer Division, which led the 1940 invasion of France. Despite his avowed dexterity, he harboured, unknowingly, among his rank and file, a spy for the British Army. The information supplied by the spy accounted for the defeat of the Germans in 1945.
I lifted the above quote from Robert Vacha’s thriller, “A Spy for Churchill” (January 1, 1974). Born Dorab Robert Vacha on January 15, 1918, Vacha served as District Officer (D.O.) in the British Colonial Administration in Nigeria between 1950 to 1957. He was a Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army and participated in World War II. “A Spy for Churchill” is one of the most accurate accounts of how the German Army was defeated in World War II.
Without an insider giving the other forces, especially the British Army, accurate information, it would have been very difficult to defeat the Germans. The Germans themselves acknowledged the existence of a spy in their Army. One authority on the German Army’s operations, Henri Nannen Verlag, puts the incident in its proper perspective when he wrote thus:
“The reports of experts on Rommel’s staff show that an intelligent enemy Secret Service had plenty of opportunity to acquire valuable information. One man in the chain along which Rommel’s plan was passed was in the pay of the enemy. Who was it? this last question remains to be answered.” (Die Wilstenfuche, 1958, page 70).
Was Dr George Nwaeke a spy on Governor Fubara? If he was, for how long? Nwaeke was in Abuja on Friday last week, where he held a one-man ‘press conference’, and like a witch in the village square, he ‘revealed’ the ‘secrets’ he shared with Fubara and some top aides on the crisis in Rivers State.
As I watched the video of the ‘press conference’, my mind raced to the video of a similar event in Edo State in 2001. The video was about the then State Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Elder Bayo Ogbomo’s alleged resignation. Copies of the ‘resignation’ letter were sent to state correspondents. God bless the then Chairman of the Correspondents Chapel, Tony Osauzo of the Concord Newspapers. He insisted that we would not file the report until we spoke to Ogbomo.
Due to our insistence, a video of where Elder Ogbomo ‘resigned’ was shown to us. In the video was Ogbomo, but many things were wrong. One, the old man looked ruffled. Two, the office, where he made the recording appeared to be an uncompleted building. Again, in the video, Ogbomo could be seen driving away some flying insects as he read the script.
We later discovered that Ogbomo was kidnapped at Five Junction, Benin City, State Secretariat of the PDP, and was taken to an uncompleted building at the Gapiona axis of the Benin G.R.A., where he was forced to read the prepared text of his resignation. Hours later after he regained his freedom, Ogbomo issued a rebuttal, stating that he was forced at gunpoint to resign. He emphasised that he remained the PDP Secretary in the state!
That was the exact picture I got as Nwaeke read his press statement in Abuja. But he went ahead to state that he was physically present when “…Governor Siminalayi Fubara directed his Chief of Staff (Edison Ehie) to burn down the Assembly to avert his impeachment. That evening, Edison was in Government House with two other boys, including the former Chairman of Obio/Akpor LGA, one Chijioke.
He continued: “I was there with them when a bag of money was handed over to Edison for that operation, though I do not know the amount inside. I want to tell the people of Rivers State today that the House of Assembly Complex on Moscow Road was deliberately brought down by Edison Ehie under the instructions of Governor Siminalayi Fubara. I challenge him to an open confrontation, and I will provide more details.”
After listening to the above, one may be tempted to ask: Is Governor Fubara ‘as stupid as he looks?’ Who was Nwaeke in the Fubara’s cabinet that the governor would trust him so much to openly discuss an arson of such a magnitude with him? How on earth would a governor invite a civil servant to witness where the plan to burn down a government establishment was being hatched?
And if we must take Nwaeke by his words, whom did he discuss the plan with after leaving the meeting? Is the ex-HoS saying that he is such a secretive individual that he did not mention the plan he witnessed to any living object? Should that be the case, is he aware of the legalese: “accessory after the fact of crime (arson)? Is it not a criminal offence that the ex-HoS did not alert the security agencies about the plan? Why is the law dormant this time?
I don’t want to hold the brief of Fubara in this matter. Much so, I am equally aware that one of the persons Nwaeke named in the plan, Edison Ehie, the Chief of Staff to Fubara, has approached the court for redress. But I must confess that Nwaeke’s ‘confession’ is something that is too difficult for me to believe. The timing, the composure, the venue (hotel room), everything, all point to a badly written script by amateur playwrights! It is all about looking for justification for the error of a state of emergency in Rivers State!
If anybody has put a lie to the Abuja badly scripted drama, it is Florence Nwaeke, the wife of the ex-HoS of Rivers State. Like most rational Nigerians, Florence does not share the narrative of her husband. I have been asking who the closest person to Nwaeke should be than his wife. But the woman knows that her husband’s trip to Abuja was an imposed one. This was in addition to revealing that her husband was forced to resign from the service of the state.
Should we believe Mrs. Nwaeke? You can decide that after hearing her speak: “When he (Nwaeke) got to Abuja, he called that he had landed. I said, ‘Thank God. The next thing I saw this night, people were calling me and said he got an interview. I said, what interview? Interview for what? Not until I saw things flying on the internet that he granted an interview. What happened? I said, that is not my husband. That is not my husband. So, I sent him a message. I said, ‘Are you under duress?’ I sent him a message. I said, ‘Have they kidnapped you? Talk to me now. Why are you not talking to me?’ This is the message I sent to him when I saw his interview online.” What type of husband receives this type of message from his wife and will choose to keep silent?
The final expose of the Abuja deal is Nwaeke’s closing remarks, where he defended President Tinubu and thanked him and the Godswill Akpabio-led moribund National Assembly. Hear him again: “This accounts for the organised media condemnations and seeming public outcry against Mr. President and National Assembly. Those who love democracy and humanity will always protect humanity and democracy. Mr. President, you have just protected democracy and humanity in Rivers State. I can now sleep with my conscience clear.”
I was tempted here to ask, like Eyo Charles, the Daily Trust reporter in Calabar, Cross River State, once asked Femi Fani-Kayode, at a press conference thus: “Who bankrolled these trips?” I stated last week that the flight to the 2027 general election “promised bad weather”, and cautioned everyone to “fasten your seat belt, turbulence ahead”. What happened in Abuja last week is one of the turbulences ahead. Next episode, please!
