|
Port
Harcourt the capital of Rivers
State was once dubbed the
"Garden City” and the state prided itself as the “Treasure Base of the
Nation”. The days were busy and full of opportunities; the nights were calm and
full of thrills. That was until ethnic and communal strife coupled with
uncontrolled youth militancy spiraled into full-blown banditry and brought the
well-manicured city that was once the destination of choice for local and
foreign professionals, businessmen and multinationals to its knees. Now, Port Harcourt is like a “ Garbage
City” and Rivers
State has earned a
derisive reputation as the “Kidnapping Base of the Nation”. Among the elite,
only those occupying political offices still stay in PH; most others including
those who only just relinquished high political offices have relocated to Abuja
and other cities with their families. After years of applying repressive
military solutions with minimal success to stem the ugly trend, a new
initiative to restore peace to the troubled state was introduced with the
establishment of the Rivers State Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)
headed by retired Justice of the Supreme Court, Kayode Eso.
The
mandate of the Rivers State TRC is to look into the atrocities perpetrated by
militants, cultists and their sponsors in the state which have raised
insecurity levels to unprecedented heights and put a knife to the economic jugular
of the nation. The TRC will, of course, make appropriate recommendations. For
weeks, unfolding events at public hearing of the TRC have been brought into
many homes and offices across the nation in living colour by the African
Independent Television (AIT) and NTA. Sincere declarations were expected to be
made at the hearings of the TRC. What has come up so far appear to be a
hodgepodge of truths, half-truths and untruths but which are, nonetheless,
expected to facilitate reconciliation of feuding parties in this volatile oil
rich state. Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi himself set the stage for the
buck-passing that has become the vogue when at the first sitting he took the
witness stand to wash his hands like Pontius Pilate off the mayhem in the state.
One challenge faced by any
growing democracy particularly in multi-ethnic polities is how to ensure that
different component groups with varying problems, potentials and aspirations
co-exist peacefully. Such societies emerging from an era characterized by
violence and serious violations of human rights face the challenge of dealing
with the past. Since the 1970s and particularly from the 1990s, the
international human right community has encouraged the institution of TRCs to
fast-track the peace process. And the establishment of TRCs has helped several
countries through this process. Feelings of resentment and the desire for
revenge cannot be alleviated unless the individual or group is enabled to
undergo a catharsis - an experience or feeling of spiritual and emotional
release and purification brought about by an intense experience. When there is no acknowledgement or accountability for past acts of
violence or abuse of power, tensions among former disputants fester until they
explode in a blaze of violence. Confronting and reckoning with the past is,
therefore, seen as vital to sustainable transition from conflict to harmony
because when virulent opponents confront each other eyeball-to-eyeball and
unburden their hearts, it becomes easier for them to look forward to a future
shared in peace, unity and amity.
Thus, the raison d’etre of
TRCs lies in their ability to serve as platforms for exorcising the minds of
all parties to a conflict. Their distinctive feature is that they are usually
non-punitive and non-adversarial which avails victims and alleged oppressors
with a comfortable environment to talk. From 1974 to 2007, at least 32 truth
commissions were established in 28 countries of the world. Many TRCs were set
up in countries of South America where human
rights violations and state sponsored violence are as common as coca-cola. Such
bodies have also been set up in many countries on the African continent where
crude competition for political power among selfish elites has aggravated
ethnic strife and unleashed unspeakable orgies of violence that have shocked
the world and fired the imagination of morbid movie producers. Examples include
Uganda (1974), Zimbabwe
(1985), Chad (1991-92), Rwanda
(1992-93), South Africa
(1995-2000), Nigeria
(1999-2000), Ghana (2002),
and Sierra Leone
(2002). TRCs have also featured in Cote d’Ivoire,
Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia,
Burundi, Central
African Republic, Kenya,
Liberia, and Morocco.
In Asia, Europe Middle East, North America,
TRCs have also been employed in restoring social harmony.
However,
a TRC need not be national in scope. The Greensboro Truth and Community
Reconciliation Project in North
Carolina set up a TRC in May 2004, to examine racially
motivated killings by the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party in 1979.
Sometimes too, such bodies need not be governmental at all. It is on record
that South Africa's
ruling African National Congress (ANC) created two TRCs in the early 1990s to
investigate the internal activities of the party. If only Nigeria’s
ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) could do the same, the future of the
party – and, by logical extension, of democracy in Nigeria
- would be the better for it. Even (NGOs) have sometimes created their own
truth commissions where governments have failed to do so. Other commissions of
inquiry have also been set up ordinarily to examine individual events or
incidents.
In
Nigeria,the
Human Rights Violation Investigation Commission (HRVIC) established by the
Obasanjo administration in 1999 still
evokes painful memories. The sensational drama and outpouring of emotional and
painful experiences witnessed at the public hearings of the HRVIC headed by
retired justice of the Supreme Court, Chukwudifu Oputa are still fresh in many
memories even as the report of that sobering exercise continues to gather dust
among other reports in the multilayered shelves of the registry archives of the
presidential villa in Abuja.
Like
the HRVIC before it, many sensational allegations have been made before the
Rivers TRC since it began sitting in PH. Inye Harry, son of the late
politician, Chief Marshal Harry, accused former Governor Peter Odili and former
President Olusegun Obasanjo of masterminding his father’s assassination. He
also accused the Speaker of the state’s House of Assembly, Hon. Tonye Harry,
and former aide to Governor Odili, Ipalibo Harry, of complicity in the crime.
Former Secretary to the Rivers State Government and one time Minister of
Transport, Dr Abiye Sekibo was also accused of being the architect of cult
related violence in his native Okrika homeland and of being a co-conspirator in
murder cases. Curiously, Marshal Harry’s eldest son, Sunny Harry, pooh poohed
his bother, Inye’s testimony and disassociated the family from it. Chief
Marshal Harry was the Rivers State Chairman of PDP in 1998-99 when Odili was
elected and sworn in as governor. He became the National Vice Chairman (South
South) of the party before he disagreed with Odili. He left PDP and joined the
rival ANPP where he was also made the National Vice Chairman before his
gruesome murder in his Abuja
home on March 5, 2003.
Among
other groups, the frontline NGO, Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) sent in a
memorandum indicting some political office holders in Rivers
State as being behind the
crises rocking the state. Celestine Omehia was specifically accused of
legalizing cultism. Odili, Sekibo, and former Deputy Speaker of the House of
Representatives, Austin Opara, were also accused of sundry crimes. Aside from
Marshall Harry, witnesses pointed accusing fingers at the principal officers of
the immediate past administration in the state for masterminding the murder of
Chief D.K. Dikibo. Dikibo, a genial political
leader became the National Vice Chairman (South - South) of PDP after the exit
of Harry but who was gunned down on his way to Asaba in circumstances that are
yet to be unravelled. Asari Dokubo, leader of the
Niger Delta Volunteer Front (NDPVF) dismissed Inye Harry’s testimony and called
him a liar. Dokubo made other damning insinuations and dressed down Governor
Amechi for diminishing everyone else before the commission in a bid to create a
hallo around himself.
Quite clearly, there has
been no dull moment at the Rivers TRC.From PH, the commission moved it’s
sitting to Abuja
to enable witnesses and personalities who did not find that venue safe or
conducive to give their testimonies. Such is the transience of political power
and the parlous state of security in Nigeria
that men who held sway only a few months ago no longer feel safe or comfortable
to make public appearances in the same state in which they loomed larger than
life. It was an irony made more poignant by the fact that Peter Odili as
Rotimi’s mentor positioned and bulldozed Rotimi’s candidature for the
governorship election until political exigency compelled him to spring up
Omehia. All that is now history buried in the hot hearth of hate and acrimony.
When Odili mounted the
witness box in Abuja,
he absolved himself of numerous criminal allegations leveled against him
including reckless waste of the resources of the state and categorically denied
having any hand in the brutal murder of Harry Marshal and D.K. Dikibo. A knight
and prominent Christian, he swore to his innocence. While accusing the
Chairman, Justice Eso, of prejudice against his person, Odili stated that but
for the respect he had for the chairman and the commission, he would not have
appeared before the TRC which he considered another ploy by Governor Rotimi to
smear his name and that of his former SSG, Sekibo. On the allegation that he
mismanaged the enormous resources which accrued to the state during his tenure,
Odili revealed that the total receipts to Rivers State from 1999-2007 was
N708.3 billion (contrary to the allegation that he collected N1.3 trillion)
which appropriation or expenditure he went to great lengths to justify.
|
Posted by Robot| 06.07.2008 10:11