•We are in a police state – Rep
•Police spokesman denies disruption
Barely72 hours after the Rivers Police
Commissioner, Mbu Joseph Mbu, chased away
13,000 newly-recruited teachers, who wanted
to collect their posting letters at the Liberation
Stadium, Port Harcourt, Mbu was at it again
yesterday morning.
Over one hundred policemen, on the orders of
the controversial police commissioner,
disrupted the inauguration of the Rivers
Leadership Advancement Foundation (RIVLEAF)
in Bonny Island, headquarters of Bonny Local
Government Area of Rivers State.
RIVLEAF members are loyal to the Rivers
governor, Rotimi Amaechi, who is also the
Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum
(NGF).
The representative of Andoni-Opobo/Nkoro
Constituency of Rivers State in the House of
Representatives, Dakuku Peterside, declared
that with the ugly development, Rivers people
were now in a police state.
The chairman of Bonny LG Council, Edward
Pepple, described the action of the policemen
as barbaric and unexpected in a democracy,
stressing that the security personnel initially
raided the Bonny Government House Lodge,
before disrupting the RIVLEAF’s inauguration.
Pepple noted that the policemen invaded all
the venues of the inauguration and declared
that the members of RIVLEAF, a socio-political
organisation, must not gather, stressing that
the policemen could not give any justifiable
reason for their action.
Peterside, a former Rivers State Commissioner
for Works and an ally of Amaechi, said: “Police
in Rivers State today (yesterday) at Bonny,
stopped the inauguration of RIVLEAF, a non-
governmental organisation of young Rivers
professionals.
“Police first mobilised over hundred men to
storm Bonny Industrial Centre. Then, the
organisers moved the event to the Local
Government Council. Police also went there to
disrupt them.
“They moved it to a private individual’s house
on Hospital Road, Bonny, yet police went
there. Finally, we are in a police state.”
The coastal Bonny is the base of the Nigerian
Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Company Limited
and the crude oil loading terminal of the Shell
Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria
Limited (SPDC), among other oil and gas firms.
The National President of RIVLEAF, Wele Alex
Wele, who is also the Special Adviser on
National Economic Affairs to Amaechi, was
contacted by telephone for his reaction, but
he didn’t pick his call, while a text message
later sent to him had not been replied as at
press time.
When also contacted at 1:54 pm, the Rivers
State Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO),
Ahmad Kidaya Muhammad, a Deputy
Superintendent of Police (DSP), said: “I am not
aware of disruption of RIVLEAF’s inauguration
at Bonny,” promising to find out and get back,
but did not do so.
A senior police officer, who would not want to
be named, stated that the Bonny’s
inauguration of RIVLEAF was not allowed in
view of the current ban on demonstrations,
protests and unauthorised assemblies, while
describing the gathering as political and could
lead to the breakdown of law and order.
When reminded that the Minister of State for
Education, Chief Nyesom Wike, who is also the
grand patron of the Grassroots Development
Initiative (GDI), had been moving round the
state’s 23 LGAs for GDI’s inauguration, without
police’s disruption and preparing to go to
Etche LGA this weekend, the police officer said:
“No comment.”
Amaechi, through the Chief of Staff,
Government House, Port Harcourt, Chief Tony
Okocha, had earlier stated that Wike had been
busy with his 2015 governorship campaigns,
contrary to the regulation of the Independent
National Electoral Commission (INEC), which
made it clear that campaigning must only take
place 90 days to elections.
The Rivers governor noted that the Minister of
State for Education had been busy deceiving
his “confused” supporters of mobilising
support for the 2015 re-election of President
Goodluck Jonathan, while campaigning for his
governorship, ignoring the nationwide strike by
the members of the Academic Staff Union of
Universities (ASUU), in its third month.
On Friday in Port Harcourt, the organised
labour in Rivers State gave the Inspector-
General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Abubakar,
and the Police Service Commission (PSC), 21-
day ultimatum to redeploy Mbu or face
indefinite strike.
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the
Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC), Rivers
State councils, asked the IGP and the police
commissioner to also tender unreserved
apology for using teargas to chase away 13,000
newly-recruited teachers, who were at the
Liberation Stadium on Wednesday to collect
their posting letters.
The River State chairman of the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Felix Obuah,
however, stated that asking 13,000 teachers to
collect posting letters at the stadium was
unwise and mischievous.
Amaechi and Mbu had been at loggerheads
since the police commissioner’s redeployment
from the Oyo State Command in February,
with the NGF chairman declaring that the only
condition for peace in the state would be the
redeployment of Mbu, who was accused of
taking sides and described as a politician.
The Senate and the House of Representatives,
in separate resolutions, before they proceeded
on recess, also called for the immediate
redeployment of the police commissioner, but
the IGP later stated that Mbu had been told to
be a professional police officer and would
remain in Rivers state.
However, a civil society group has appealed to
the National Council of State (NCS) to
intervene and end what it described as “the
reign of terror being orchestrated in Rivers
State by Commissioner of Police Mbu Joseph
Mbu who is playing power politics in the state
while neglecting his police duties and the
crime rate is escalating.”
The group, Coalition of Concerned Citizens,
Indigenes and Non-Indigenes Residents In
Rivers State (CCCINRRS) decried the police
blundering in the state, accusing Mbu of a
plethora of derelictions while cozying up with
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) politicians in
the state in a comedy of the absurd which
residents of the state do not find funny at all.
It urged the National Council of State to
prevail on President Goodluck Jonathan to call
Mbu to order because the state police chief’s
professional non-performance “is a disgrace to
our national psyche.”
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