If the words of Godswill Akpabio, Senate President, indicate the true feelings of the people of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, President Bola Tinubu will make a clean sweep of the votes available in their land in 2027, should he decide to go for re-election.

Akpabio, a day after assuring of the votes of his native Akwa Ibom for the President, during a stakeholders meeting of the All Progressives Congress (APC), upped the ante on Saturday, with the assurance that the people of the oil-rich region, had also signed in to the Tinubu re-election project, because of the goodies the President had brought to the people.

At the grand finale of the 25th anniversary of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) in Port Harcourt, Rivers State as part of the activities to round off the week-long celebration, he told his audience that the people had decided to support Tinubu to continue in office beyond 2027 because of the projects that the administration had brought to the zone.

In the audience were Goodluck Jonathan, former President, George Akume, Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), who represented Tinubu, Ibok-Ette Ibas, Administrator of Rivers State, lawmakers, traditional rulers, ministers, and key figures from across the Niger Delta.

Advertisement

Anietie Ekong, his spokesman quoted the former Governor of Akwa Ibom State and currently Chairman of the National Assembly, as recalling how the region was handed the short end of the stick in the affairs of the country, despite being the major revenue earner and how Tinubu had redeemed the ugly situation in the last two years, hence the resolve to pay him back handsomely with their votes in 2027.

Hear him: “In the past the Niger Delta was used as the goose that produced the golden egg with nothing to show for it. Today President Tinubu has set up an Environmental Sciences University in Ogoni land to take care of the environment which had been degraded as a result of oil pollution.

“He has also set up a Maritime University, signed it into an Act of Parliament in Okerenkoko in Delta State. He has given us several tertiary institutions in Agriculture, Technology and lots of others. So, it is not only in terms of appointments but various projects. This is the region that produces the wealth of the nation. We have the right to choose who manages our resources. So, people should not think that anybody can just come and become the President without consultation with the people of the Niger Delta.

“We the people of the Niger Delta have assessed President Tinubu and have found him fit to continue in office beyond 2027. So let the people who are conspiring against President Tinubu hear this. They did it before and conspired to remove our son, President Goodluck Jonathan. This time around the entire Niger Delta region has decided to speak with one voice. And we are telling the President ‘on your mandate we stand.’ No conspiracy formed against this Government that has recognised the Niger Delta shall prosper.”

Akpabio, however, decried the high turnover of management team of the NDDC which he said had slowed the pace of development of the oil-rich region, stressing that the outcome, also created endless cycles where new leaders were removed before finishing projects, leaving thousands of initiatives abandoned and wasting billions meant for development

Advertisement

He however extolled the present team led by the Managing Director, Dr Samuel Ogbuku, for adhering to the vision of the founding fathers of the interventionist agency by embarking on projects that had impacted positively on the lives of the people of the region.

His words: “There were many reasons we have had so much problems in NDDC. Part of it was leadership tussle. In the Niger Delta region, we have what we call ‘periwinkle politics.’ This is politics where everybody bears the same head. Nobody wants to wait for his turn. Everybody feels that he should be there and not the other person.

“So there was always this conspiratorial situation. Each management in the NDDC would conspire against themselves and ofcourse the staff will assist them to quarrel and shortly after they will sack the management. And one of them would become the acting Managing Director.”

Akpabio, who was also the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, at a point, which oversaw the commission recounted how for over 20 years it could not complete its headquarters building until he took charge of the Ministry and gave a marching order to its leadership to complete the hitherto long abandoned project.

Recalling also how the Commission left behind over 14,700 abandoned projects because regime change brought with it new projects, he explained that having discovered such a lapse and how it retarded growth Tinubu found it worthy to allow Ogboku complete his tenure.

Advertisement

“I salute the present management,” he said, particularly enthusing on how Ogbuku, and his team brought stability to the commission, while urging it to break away from endless cycles of sabotage and focus on continuity so that development projects can be completed.

Jonathan, who also commended Tinubu for continuing with the present board of the commission, noting that development would engender sustainable development of the region, which he acknowledged, remained pivotal to the region’s economic growth and material well-being of the people.

By Sunny Igboanugo

This Reuben Abati sef! What was he trying to say again this morning on Arise? After the 2023 presidential election, when Nigerians were bemoaning their fate as the courts were churning out one bizarre, funny and outlandish verdict after the other – judgements without justice in support of the obvious heist – he took it as his remit to pour cold water on the righteous indignation pervading the land.

He chose a time of general anger, moral outrage, weeping, wailing, mourning and gnashing of the teeth trailing the official endorsement of the political larceny that had just happened to people to deliver his notorious declaration – Public opinion is kilometres and kilometres away from law.

Such insensitive, if not thoughtless move, as he sought to paper over a serious injury to the essence of decency and heavy blow to public good and integrity of democratic ethos, rankled at that time as it still does today. It was akin to adding salt to injury to a grieving community.

Advertisement

As many asked then, what then is the essence of law if it defeats or is glaringly antithetical to public opinion? From whence did the dictum – justice must not only be done, but seen to be done derive from if public opinion is not part of the context?

I remember the treatise of Justice Obiora Nwazota, former Chief Judge of Anambra State, when he dissected the issue of public opinion in relations to the phrase – right-thinking members of the society – and how he concluded that the term did not suggest fish mongers at Ose Okwodu market must be the ones to decide. Anyone with little education or tiny matter in his brain, ought to discern between the shape of the letter ‘B’ and the footprint of a cow!

So, on Thursday, when Vice President Kashim Shettima, took to the podium to make a profound statement, in one of the rarest outings on the nation’s political scenes in recent times, to the fact that No President in Nigeria has the powers to Remove a councillor, not to talk of a governor, his audience heard him loud and clear.

Now, Shettima, has been on the political scene for much of the 25 years the current experience has lasted. Before becoming VP, he was a commissioner in Borno State, from where he rose to the seat of governor and then Senator. Is this the same man that would mount the podium to speak on such a sensitive matter at a time the State of Emergency is still a live-issue, and you say he is not referring to the same matter?

It means the VP must be a political daft – which he obviously is not – not to know, or at least suspect the interpretation the public would attach to such a comment at a time like this, given the prevailing circumstances and arguments on the matter.

Advertisement

Pray! How does the constitutional interpretation of Removal and or Suspension become the issue or dominate the debate when Sim Fubara, has remained out of office as governor and democratic institutions in the state out in the cold as a result of the emergency rule in Rivers State? Is that not the bottomline here instead of the fine grains of law?

What law is Abati trying to teach us, dan Allah, e jowo, biko nu? We may not all be lawyers, but as Nwazota, said, we are not all fish-mongers as well. We are capable of discerning a common issue and determining what someone says. We understand KS, very well and know that he said what he meant and meant what he said.

If anything, this is a man, whose job is currently at stake and has remained subject of intense speculations. Would it not be more apposite to interpret his outing as loud coughing to draw attention to himself and indicate that he is still very much around and perhaps warn those toying with the funny idea of seeking his leg for pepper-soup to be wise and more prudent?

I’m particularly enchanted by Abati’s immense intellectual prowess. It literally puts me in my rightful place as “uneducated” and “unlearned” – his usual terms for dismissing people like us. In fact, each time I listen to him, I seem to regret that half of my school hours were wasted fighting in the streets or plucking mangoes than being in the classroom. He is one of the major reasons I never miss watching The Morning Show on ARISE NEWS, each day, if I could help it.

But even at that we cannot be detained permanently by inability to measure up to his scholarly attainments or deceived all the time by legal masturbations in a matter that is as straightforward as the statement of the VP. You can only tell a blind man that there is no oil in the soup and not that there is no salt.

Advertisement

I don’t know whether his outing on Friday is intentional or inadvertent. But whatever it is, may I plead with Reuben Abati, my brother and compatriot to apply brake and add hydraulic. To him I say, this day borrowing from Fela Anikulapo Kuti – Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense! _ The Tiny Voice

By Sunny Igboanugo

Okey Akaneme, former President of Onitsha Chamber of Commerce Industries Mines and Agriculture (ONICCIMA), has finally gone to meet his maker.

His damning fate, encapsulates the entire sad tale of Anambra State under the supervision of Charles Chukwuma Soludo, Governor of Anambra State since March 17, 2022 till date.

Advertisement

The Story: On October 11, 2024 men of the Anambra State Waste Management Authority (ASWAMA) paid him a midday visit. That was the last time he functioned as a normal person. The rest of his days were spent in a vegetative state from one hospital to the other in Anambra and Enugu.

The ASWAMA men, having delivered their trademark blow, left his spine broken and and rendered him permanently dysfunctional until he finally gave up, ending the earthly agony.

Perhaps he could have lived longer, but the last time I heard about him, he had been abandoned at, I heard, Park Lane Hospital, Enugu. The Anambra State Government, which reluctantly intervened after a long period of public outrage, forgot, failed or outrightly refused to pay further hospital bills.

I hear also that before their intervention, Akaneme’s family had spent all they had, including selling off family properties to raise money to save his life, to no avail.

Now, everything is gone – loving husband, father and breadwinner – gone – leaving family in distress – physically – emotionally – financially!

Advertisement

The culprits? Nothing! Nada! Mum is the word at government quarters. The last I heard of the official side was that the “Government is investigating.” Meanwhile life goes on. More parties to celebrate the mint-₦150billion Government House!

If you’re waiting for the devils that went on that mission and delivered that lethal blow of October 11, 2024 to be rounded up, prosecuted and deservedly locked away from a decent human society, then you’re in for a long wait.

Your answer might come in a different society and probably the next generation. You might just try the International Criminal Court )ICC) at The Hague.

If you’re waiting for emotional compensation in terms of visitation to the family or official apology since the atrocity bears the imprimatur of government, directly or vicariously, then you’re talking about a different Anambra.

As I write this amid droplets of tears for Akaneme and other victims, the streets of Awka and many communities are swarming with thugs, toughies, and roughnecks wielding all manner crude weapons which they freely employ on citizens at the slightest excuse or no excuse at all, other than just animalistic pleasure – pure sports and entertainment.

Advertisement

The other day it was Enugwu-Ukwu and the other, Obosi, where the Men of Aka-Odo – a dangerous brand of ruffians with the modus operandi of torturing their victims with wooden pestles, deliberately aimed at the tendons, calves and knee-caps to inflict maximum pains and cause temporary or permanent paralysis – reportedly came calling and eventually left in their trails their usual imprint of destruction – weeping, wailing, mourning and gnashing of the teeth.

So, don’t wait! Expecting any form of civility, humane treatment or empathy in the instant case is like pleading for sympathy in the captivity of those blood-thirsty terrorists strutting the landscape of Nigeria. Don’t even go there.

It means you’re yet to appreciate the tenor of those in charge. It means you’re still sucked-in by the noise you hear about the totally Audio Performance. It means you’re still blind to the arrogance – the selfishness – the self-conceitedness – the loath-inspired Pull Him Down (PHC) syndrome at Agu Awka.

It means you’re on all fours with the cluelessness that suggests that the best and only way to generate revenue by the government, is to chance on common citizens trying to eke out a living in the streets of Amawbia, Nnewi and Ekwulobia and give them the Aka-odo treatment or swoop on the managers of the few surviving enterprises in Awka and Onitsha, still deeply thinking about how to pay the next salaries and give them the Akanaeme treatment.

It means you’re what they say you are – uneducated mumu, the derisive name they call you in open and in the private and think you truly deserve, for your inability to think outside the box and for following them sheepishly, unable to change your destiny by taking it in your hand.

Advertisement

If you’re still detained by the alluring feeling that you have a Professor who will professor well and deliver to you the Dubai-Taiwan of Africa, then the joke is on you.

In an era where these Professors, in fact, Vice Chancellors of universities – the highest job for an academic – are procured to write, collate and announce fake results and create outcomes capable of consuming their country, as is now evident in Nigeria, just because they want to join the club of SUV owners and own buildings in Abuja and other big towns, what else do we have left as dividends of academic attainments?

If you’re not yet appalled by the fact that a former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is currently struggling with one complete illiterate counterpart who could not even pronounce the figures in a state budget before the House of Assembly, on how many roads he has built – a routine activity even a complete imbecile could do – then you’re part of the problem.

If you’re convinced that it doesn’t amount to monumental failure that a former CBN governor has not attracted a single local industry let alone one that mimics global concerns like Huawei, Microsoft or Tesla, which is really why he was hired in the first place, having promised to do so – take a bow of ignominy.

If you also thought as you quaffed the O Mpa in your glass, or sipped your Hero Malt that the only reward the architect who made it possible that they are readily available on your table and at your weddings and burials, is deserving of, is to be pulled down and concerned to political ruins by the ex-CBN boss, to satisfy his whims and jealousy-influenced inordinate desires, despite his own zero performance on the same score – good luck to you on the road to infamy.

Advertisement

If you thought that the hands that wrought this horrible fate on Okechukwu Akaneme should be strengthened and it’s your remit to help in doing so, just know that even at work in the social home in England taking care of the elderly or in the US court crusading for justice for the immigrants struggling to escape the hammer of Donald Trump or at Jankara, Ladipo in Lagos or Sabongeri in Kano or Ogbete Enugu or Eke Oka, Orie Amaesi, Nkwo-Igbo, Eke Ekwulobia – as long as you say yes – the joke is on you.

Don’t say aka m adighi ya, I furu m ebe ahu? You can’t escape it. You share in the culpability. You are liable. You are guilty. Your hand dey there. Because there will be more Akanemes!

There’s only way to not only to escape culpability in the instant case but prevent future Akanemes and other unknown victims – Punish the hands that did this evil.

Stop the wickedness at Agu Awka. End the cluelessness. Olusegun Obasanjo warned Nigerians in 2019 with Muhammadu Buhari not to reinforce failure. The result of not heeding that warning is there, obvious for the world to see today.

Isn’t the same warning apt in Anambra as we stare at each other and wonder what manner of a Professor thinks that Aka-Odo is the best model of generating revenue? Must we then reinforce failure? If yes, good luck, if no, you know what to do. I don’t need to tell you.

Advertisement

As Okari Obodo – that dangerous masquerade in my community, was always wont in warning parents – Onwehi onye ma onye o je awu nnwaya – translated – nobody knows whose child is next. I’ve done my part.

May the soul of Okechukwu Akaneme and the souls of other victims of Agu Awka atrocities, rest in peace. Amen _ The Tiny Voice!