Ominous escalation

by persons yet to be identified by the police, was one more warning to higher authorities to intervene to bring the festering political crisis in the state to a stop.The court, presided over by Mr Justice C.N. Wali, was due to deliver a ruling in a case between some persons involved in the rising climate […]

by persons yet to be identified by the police, was one more warning to higher authorities to intervene to bring the festering political crisis in the state to a stop.
The court, presided over by Mr Justice C.N. Wali, was due to deliver a ruling in a case between some persons involved in the rising climate of political tension in Rivers State.
In an earlier ruling, Justice Wali had barred a member of the Rivers State House of Assembly, Mr Evans Bipi, from parading himself as the Speaker.
Mr Evans and five others were involved in a fracas in the premises of the House of Assembly last year, in which several members were injured.  
The political crisis is heavily coloured with the involvement of President Goodluck Jonathan and first lady Dame Patience Jonathan in a condescending struggle with Governor Rotimi Amaechi over power and governance in the state.
The security agents, particularly the Rivers State police command, are not helping matters either; clearly their interests appear not so much as in law and order as pandering to the wishes of political heads.
In the heat of the crisis last year, a local government headquarters was attacked and destroyed.
Later on, as the crisis also engulfed the House of Assembly, Bipi and five others tried to dismiss the majority by staging a session and declaring Bipi to be speaker, and proceeded to sketch a plan to remove Amaechi from his post of governor.
The result was chaos, and the violence that erupted when Amaechi led his own loyalists to take back control of the legislature.
The House of Representatives imposed control of the Rivers State House of Assembly; the order was adjudged unconstitutional last month by a High Court in Abuja.
Taking its roots from the political falling apart between Amaechi and Jonathan, the crisis is threatening peace and order.
Some of the president’s aides, including ministers, are deeply involved in stoking the fire.
This is unhealthy and dangerous; and the sooner the president exercises his political authority and bring the warring factions together, the better not only for the state, but for the country as well.
Political differences should not breed enmity to the level of launching fatal attacks on each other’s camp and destroying public buildings built at great cost.
The police say that they were unable to arrest any suspect in the Ahoada court bombing. That in itself is troubling, because it lends itself to a trend indicating that each time a law-and-order issue allegedly involving the camp that is sympathetic to the state government is made public, arrests are swiftly made, some among senior aides to or party loyalists of Amaechi’s, even if the evidence is tenuous.
Last week a fatal accident involving a vehicle that was said to belong the leader of the Rivers State House of Assembly became another cause for high level political exchanges between both camps.
Although the police did not say he was behind the wheel at the time, or was even inside the vehicle, they nevertheless went to his house and arrested him for the traffic offence. He is known to be in the Amaechi camp.
Recently, reports surfaced about the seizure of a large cache of arms and ammunition from persons linked to three prominent allies of the first lady.  The seizure was made not by the police, but the military Joint Task Force that operates in the area.  Other reports now claim that the security agencies have been under intense pressure to have those who were detained in connection with the munitions released.  The purpose to which such dangerous weapons would be put can only be guessed at, but it would be irresponsible to have these men released before the public is told what their mission was.
The ball is in the president’s court, as the guardian of the nation’s security wellbeing, to step and end the freewheeling descent into anarchy that events in Rivers State appear to be heading.