ROTIMI AMAECHI HAS QUESTIONS TO ANSWER ON THE OMOKU KILLINGS - By Oraye St. Franklyn

Former Governor Rotimi Amaechi has questions to answer in relation to the recent killings in Rivers State.

This is on the strength of the fact that until he raised unwarranted issues on presumed and imagined insecurity in the State and falsely alleging that the State had become unsafe for habitation, in a December 29, 2017 interview published by Vanguard Newspaper, the State was peaceful.

His comment followed a January 1, 2018 bloodletting at Omoku, which rather than condemn, he sprung up with alacrity, banking on it as though he had been waiting for an opportunity, if not fabricating one himself, to serve as the basis to call for the resignation of Governor Wike.

The plan, as one can reasonably deduce, was to stir strife and use the accompanying bloodletting as the basis to impose a State of emergency in Rivers State. That would have been Amaechi’s desperate backdoor route to the coffers of Rivers State, after consistently failing at the polls to elect a lackey as a medium for the same objective. Unfortunately he has not given up on that ambition and has settled for the bid to take Rivers by whatever means.

The script almost played out as presumably planned but for the interrupting and unexpected interjection of the Benue Killings by suspected Fulani herdsmen. The Benue interruption neutralized the plot. There was no way a state of emergency would have been declared in Rivers without same being declared in Benue or even Kaduna or Lagos that had had similar security challenges.

The Omoku killings are more than meets the eyes. The preceding and swift moves of Minister Amaechi, after the sad incident, are too smooth to be seen as merely coincidental or providential conjecture, especially after he had had a long lull of silence on the politics of Rivers State.

Minister Amaechi on the face of reasonable and incontrovertible presumptions appears to know a thing or two about the Omoku killings than the rest of us and should be called in for questioning by the authorities.

His swiftness after the incident in accusing the Rivers State Governor of being responsible doesn’t sit right, especially since it was just 2 days before he raised questionable flags on the imaginary insecurity of Rivers State. The current and prevailing narratives by his media aides who are harping on the need for emergency rule in Rivers State are both a self-defeating effort and corroborating basis to call him in for questioning.

Most of all, since his desperation to take over the reins of power in Rivers State by the proxy of his acolytes and politcally-damned lackeys is no secret, it cannot be out of place for such a desperate man to take on desperate and callous measures to achieve his aim. Also, on the basis of the fact that only backdoor and strong-arm tactics can capture power in Rivers State for the All Progressives Congress (APC), of which the embattled Transportation Minister, Rotimi Amaechi is a chieftain, outside the tenets of democracy that doesn’t favour the Party in the State, he cannot reasonably absolve himself from the incident at Omoku. He knows more. He should be called in and frisked, if crime, criminality and daylight bloodletting have not become APC’s new tactics of undermining the popular will of the people and ascending to power by the backdoor.

It’s up to the Federal Government to do the needful at this sunshine, while it is still possible to make hay.