Rivers Re-run and the Abuja’s Foolhardy Politicians

Certainly, never in the history of electoral politics and electioneering in Nigeria that a ruling party and federal administration exposed its desperation to influence the outcome by all means possible by applying all the crude implements of power available to it even the naked display of brutal armed force on an unarmed and hapless citizenry. And nowhere is this description more apt than the present unfortunate scenario playing out in Rivers State as a prelude to the re-run elections for national assembly seats as the APC led-federal administration has made no secret of its overarching ambition to seize the contested seats by all means as a furtherance of its ultimate goal of turning Nigeria into a one-party state under the domination of the APC ideological and political fiefdom.
Coming on the heels of the highly questionable APC victories in the Edo and Ondo gubernatorial contests which some sanguine observers have described as rigging of a highly scientific nature; the Rivers re-run elections has become one more testing ground of the APC led administration’s rule by force and intimidation, from the lack of obedience of court orders, to the intimidation of the judiciary, a selective war on corruption and the display of military might to suppress and violate the legitimate rights of resource control agitators in the South-South and South-Eastern parts of the country.
Seemingly, the main target of this federal might incursion is no less than the office and personality of the Rivers State Governor, His Excellency Barrister Ezenwo Nyesom Wike who it appears has drawn the uncompromising ire and displeasure of the powers that be in his strident insistence on the supremacy of the rule and law and due process in the conduct of affairs of state by both federal, state and local authorities. Recalling, when the DSS were sent on a kami-kaze mission to the homes and residences of top judges at the dead of the night in clear violation of their fundamental human rights, a fearless Governor Wike was the only political leader that stood up against the bare faced absolutism and executive thuggery of the DSS commandos and their state sponsors.
Similarly, the discovery of an illegal printing press where INEC ballot sheets and election materials were being duplicated in their hundreds of thousands by vigilant agents of the action governor led to the arrest of the printers and the confiscation of the materials. However, feelers have emerged that the owner of the printing press is a bosom friend of the Minister of Transportation, Rt. Hon. Rotimi Amaechi, thus giving credence to the fact that the police have so far kept mute on the matter and efforts are on course to cover up the case officially. In this regard Governor Wike has spoken out against the alleged police collusion with the illegal printers of the INEC forms thus alerting the people of Rivers State on plans by the Police, INEC, and armed forces to jointly conspire to rig the re-run elections by deployment of thugs wearing fake army, police and other armed personnel uniforms and the recruitment of thousands of APC ward secretaries and officials as INEC ad-hoc staff to aid the naked resort  to electoral chicanery and manipulation.

In fact, INEC allegedly hired the APC party officials as members of their ad-hoc staff with the dubious claim that they were employees of the University of Port Harcourt when in actual fact, they are nothing more than thugs and unemployed hangers-on at the APC party secretariat with no identifiable job description. Not one to be intimidated by the shenanigans of usurpers of federal and state power, an irrepressible Gov. Wike has alerted the Rivers State people of the imminent INEC, APC and Police plot while exhorting the people to stand up for their inalienable rights, no matter the level of intimidation, pressure or official harassment.
The populist governor’s courageous and principled stance has predictably drawn the anger and consternation of the federal rulers if recent security developments are anything to go by as the Chief Security Officer and detail of the governor’s police security have been withdrawn abruptly presumably on orders from above. What this grave development portends for the security of life and limb of the governor and his immediate family members can only be imagined as no credible security exists to thwart any act of physical attack on the person of the governor, his family and his residence, a scenario that no executive governor has faced since the inception of our nascent democratic experiment in 1999.
Despite Presidents Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan’s disagreements or differences with any governor be it political, sectional or administrative there has never been any resort to depriving the relevant governor of his security detail or apparatus and this unfolding development is one that speaks volumes of the naked resort to the Hobbesian laws of the jungle of an APC federal administration that has failed woefully in all known indices of governance and prefers to chase shadows and mice while its house is on fire. With the raging Boko Haram insurgency that has witnessed renewed vigor, the flare of militancy in the Niger Delta and secessionist agitations in the South-East coupled with the endemic scourge of armed robbery, kidnappings and cultism in most parts of the country, it only behooves the federal government to adopt forward looking, multi-pronged carrot and stick approaches to resolving the simmering security challenges.
To exclusively focus on Rivers state and the stage-managing and manipulation of the elections with the unprecedented display of military might and resources that could be usefully deployed to other areas smacks of administrative and executive shortsightedness, insensitivity and crass incompetence and indolence of the highest order. Of recent, the APC led federal government has formed the habit of deploying serving state governors to various election theatres as if they were dispatching generals or commanding officers to the battlefield, in Ondo it was Governor Lalong of Plateau State and for Rivers re-run elections, it is now Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State, a state presently reeling from the gargantuan debt profile inherited from the profligate Kwankwaso administration put conservatively at over 350 billion naira, one of the highest in the federation. So rather than busy himself with setting his messy house in order, Governor Ganduje has been sent forth to lead the latest planned APC assault on the electoral process, transparency and the rule of law.
However, whatever his dubious terms of reference and mission objective as specified by his Abuja masters, Governor Ganduje should be rest assured that his Rivers re-run stint will be both memorable, challenging and stultifying as the entirety of the Rivers State people are united in confronting and eventually defeating the forces of tyranny, absolutism, brutish power politics and internal colonialism in all its crude and unpleasant manifestations. God shall be our witness.