THE BOMB BLAST: AN ERA OF STRANGE COINCIDENCES

When Raymond Aleogho Dokpesi announced that he would be ‘stepping aside’ as Chairman of his own media conglomerate, Daar Group for the job of Director-General of the IBB Campaign Organisation, not many people were aghast. It would appear that some people never seem to get enough. The average Nigerian would be satisfied being Nigeria’s version […]

When Raymond Aleogho Dokpesi announced that he would be ‘stepping aside’ as Chairman of his own media conglomerate, Daar Group for the job of Director-General of the IBB Campaign Organisation, not many people were aghast. It would appear that some people never seem to get enough. The average Nigerian would be satisfied being Nigeria’s version of Ted Turner and if they achieve that, it would have sufficed to grow it and keep off the murky waters of politics, but to each his desire and the constitution guarantees that.
Years back when Babangida liberalized public broadcasting without breaking government’s oligopolic hold on its own megaphones, many called Raypower a pirate station. Those were the days before Radio Kudirat would braze the trail of guerrilla broadcasting as a reaction to an intolerant regime led by a maximum dictator Sani Abacha. If today, Dokpesi feels that he owed IBB one and believes this is payback time, or for some other reason wants to pitch his political tent with Nigeria’s much loathed political Maradona, freedom of political association is equally guaranteed under our law. Truth is that, for those who know Dokpesi, he has always played on the fringes of politics, perhaps he believes that his investments are better protected by so doing. That is a strategy that business nymphs like Jimoh Ibrahim understands. At injury time, a flash of your party card could soften the ground for safe business landing or pave the way for greater aspiration. It’s all part of the crude admixture of politics and business. Elsewhere, the two don’t mix, but we are in a strange land in bed with strange coincidences.
The Evil Genius has many enemies who believe that he had gotten away with blue murder and that he should have his date with nemesis. But in the absence of a court-pronounced guilty verdict, it would appear that the best his enemies should do is to mobilize votes against his aspiration. But it would appear that the ruling clique is uncomfortable to dine with the devil himself, even with a long spoon and would love to nip it in the bud. In politics, it’s the famed Marleyan philosophy- kill them before they grow.
You could call Dokpesi an opportunist or a crude businessman. It would appear that he did not clean up his house before throwing open the doors. There are talks that his media empire did not pay its due to the state and the FIRS are after him. Rather than pay his debts, he is appealing to public sentiments. It is his usual safety net. He once used such emotional appeal to get Nigerians to contribute to bail him out of a crisis long before he opened up his company shares to the public. Some have privately frowned at the curious ways his staff come to answer his name soon after joining his group but it is not a crime known to law and moralists can only grumble. Most media houses drum up support for workers welfare but fail to pay their own workers, and Dokpesi’s conglomerate is no exception. For as long as his staff refuse to either go on strike of take him to court to fulfill his obligations, it means they are comfortable or tolerant of the situation and guilty of what lawyers call laches and acquiescence.
But no sooner had Dokpesi taken his seat at the IBB Campaign Headquarters when, according to him, his phone lines began to jam uncontrollably. There were anonymous calls and texts and talk of attempts to kidnap him and his eldest son. That, to public knowledge was derided by the authorities and political mentors without due investigation. It is curious then, that texts allegedly sent to him in the wake of the October 1 bomb blasts could easily be traced and used to persecute him when alleged threats to kidnap him were ignored. These are strange coincidences indeed.
We should not forget that the same Niger Delta militants they would want us to believe he is nw hobnobbing with had declared him persona non grata and even argued that he has no hostage value. If the current terrorism tag could be proved then the rational conjecture is that he is currying favour to be re-admitted to the creeks by sponsoring terrorism against the state or supporting it. Again, that is a strange coincidence bearing in mind that he is working for a man legitimately seeking a lawful means to re-govern Nigeria. For a man with such a vast business venture, it would amount to both economic and political hara-kiri, but these are early days yet and as the scriptures concur the heart of man is evil and desperately wicked.
The events of October 1, Nigeria’s equivalent of 9/11 are, to say the least a shocking watershed in our evolution, but it is not the first. A terrorist organization which has declared war against the state and largely ignored its offer of amnesty had vowed to turn against the state’s profligate celebration to draw global attention to its plight by not just mobilizing an armed insurrection in the creeks but planting bombs in the federal capital on independence day. Apparently, the attack was to take the shine off a golden moment. Even though it had given ample warning to allow for evacuation, the state and its efficient security apparatchik ignored them and placed the lives of its citizens and potentially those of its invited dignitaries at risk for reasons which would somehow evolve after the political dust has cleared. As a result of that negligence, no less than a dozen people have died.
But the President, who subsequently sacked his own security adviser immediately, denied complicity for those who claimed to have done it. Our President did not stop there; he claimed to know those who did it, minutes after the event. Our conjecture at that moment was that he was talking with the knowledge of high-level security or trying not to give credence to an organization that was seeking global notoriety. The rational question is, should he have done so? And a comparative analysis could be made from Farouk Mutallab’s attempt to bomb a plane over Detroit City on Christmas day. He had been literally caught ‘pants down’ but it took President Obama more than 24 hours to make a pronouncement. American reaction was co-ordinated and consistent that it left no gaping holes or yawning gaps for doubtful insinuations.
In our case, the jumbled accounts by both the police and the SSS working for the same government left gaping holes. We need to know the correct number of bombs allegedly planted. MEND claimed it had planted two, and observers recall hearing two blasts occurring minutes within each other – the SSS claimed it had actually uncovered six and defused four. It provided no shred of evidence as should be expected of a sophisticated security outfit it is eager to portray itself. The police of course stuck to two. The SSS claimed to have arrested nine people in connection with the incident; the police on the other hand arrested one and declared two missing. The SSS was eager to release the identity of the ‘kingpin’ suspect even before its investigations were concluded, but curiously the police refused to do so, a safe alibi.
MEND confessed on camera to an Al-Jazeera reporter 48 hours before the deed was done that it would be planting the bombs. The president who denied MEND involvement provided no shred of evidence to the contrary. The SSS which was holding Dokpesi curiously released contents of text messages to his phone it claimed supported its theoretical link with the terrorists on government-owned megaphone the NTA prompting the question why the rush?
Hours after the whole brouhaha, Henry Orkar, MEND’s leader in exile is charged to court for terrorism charges. While in detention, he makes contact with Al-Jazeera saying that government had, minutes after the blast asked him to deny MEND’s involvement with the bomb blast so that it could lay it squarely on the doorstep of the legendary northern politicians who are still smarting from the President’s insouciant insistence on running against a controversial zoning within the ruling party that naturally excluded him. Again, government quickly derides the report as laughable vituperations of a drowning man seeking to pull everyone down with him. Ironically, Orkar is not known to be friends of northern politicians and is by no stretch a northerner, so what would he gain by making such fabrications? But then, security operatives can easily check this by checking Orkar’s phone records, the same way they checked Dokpesi’s to find out who made the call to him. Unlike the dubious Nigerian saga, the South Africans have the technological capacity to provide this strong link or deny it.
There are, as usual, more questions than answers. Al-Jazeera has evidence that the repentant (?!) militants making solidarity visits to the Aso Rock Presidential Villa are not the same MEND it spoke to in the creeks hours before the blast. So, what does the solidarity visit prove? That MEND does not exist as government is trying to make believe? MEND makes no secret of its desire to make the country ungovernable unless its demands are met. Months earlier, it had scuttled a government-sponsored parley in Warri with similar blasts so, the Abuja one is not its first, although it is the bloodiest. The entire saga and government’s handling of it smirks of crash incompetence by the government eager to deflect the arrows of suspicion to a wrong source and burning its fingers in the process. Nigeria is more than any individual or group. Its corporate subsistence is our best strength and no individual or group ambition should threaten that existence.
It is strange that in the entire brouhaha, the duo of Dora Akunyili and Labaran Maku were curiously silent at a time their ‘public relations’ credentials ought to have saved the day. It shows that this country, the largest in Africa has no communication plan and thus no crisis communication strategy. The security agencies are working at cross purposes and not co-ordinated. Government is in a quandary and politicians are cashing in on a dangerous situation which could push our dear country over the edge. The entire brouhaha is reminiscent of the bomb saga involving Oladipo Diya before his trial by Sani Abacha. Nigeria should not be dragged back into the dark ages.