Bayelsa State Robbed At Gun And Pen-point - By Aluzu Ebikenuna Augustine

• "If the recent revelation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) that it has recovered over N1bn from the South South alone is anything to go by, I will be left in no doubt that the dried bones of Anini will shake in disbelief at the expertise of our modern day Anini's. Even Anini himself will have to agree with the aphorism that "the pen is mightier than the sword" when it comes to heists. He would be a learner in his own game to our 'Enemies Within' beside the Alamieyeseigha's, Dezianini's, Patience Jonathan, Dudafa of our time because his most impressive heist at the African Intercontinental Bank, Agbor branch fetched him about N46,000.00 not more than USD$10,000 (at the time), a mere USD$150 (going by current exchange rate of $1 = N305)"

27/9/2016


Anini may be long gone, but his adventure is still fresh in our minds. In 1986 when he terrorized the whole nation, he thought himself 'above the law' owing to the complicity of top Police officials as he was egregiously referred to as 'the law'. He ruthlessly pillaged and carnaged the old Bendel state and men of the Nigerian Police Force and sometimes munificent enough to let the masses partake in the share of his booty as a stratagem of escape employed by him and his gang.

Anini who spearheaded a four month reign of terror between August to December 1986 killed over nine Police men among others and robbed banks and other vulnerable joints. He was later captured and sentenced to death. He was executed March 29, 1987.

His reign was so bad that Justice Omo-Agege while passing judgement on Anini and his gang remarked, “Anini will forever be remembered in the history of crime in this country, but it would be of unblessed memory. Few people if ever, would give the name to their children.”

In March 1987 when Lawrence Anini's capture made headlines, the news triggered jubilation amongst Nigerians. Though Bayelsa was very much annexed with Rivers state, little did it know it had a galore of clever Anini's waiting in the polity to plunder and leech on it as well. Indeed, we thought that was the last to be heard of Anini.

Many years after the execution of Anini, Bayelsa has been under the administration of successive elected Governors from 1999 till date who have held the state to ransom at gun and pen-point. These Anini's cuts across the different Senatorial District of the state and Local Government Areas. Their tentacles spread to neighboring states in the purlieu called Niger Delta region. These Aninis have impoverished Bayelsans, comparing the staggering resources that have come into our disposal as a state and the development on ground gives credence to my assertions. They are our 'Enemies Within' found in every government agencies and parastatals.

The almost 2million out of school children due to NUT strike, impassable roads in our streets, Hospitals that are relics of a bygone era, continuous owing of civil servants salary, about 85℅ unemployed Bayelsa graduates a resultant effect of the embargo on employment, gross impoverishment of Bayelsans,  dilapidated public structures, environmental degradation by activities of Militants, and above all, the insecurity on our waterways is a pointer to how terribly Bayelsa has been managed.

If the recent revelation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) that it has recovered over N1bn from the South South alone is anything to go by, I will be left in no doubt that the dried bones of Anini will shake in disbelief at the expertise of our modern day Anini's. Even Anini himself will have to agree with the aphorism that "the pen is mightier than the sword" when it comes to heists. He would be a learner in his own game to our 'Enemies Within' beside the Alamieyeseigha's, Dezianini's, Patience Jonathan, Dudafa of our time because his most impressive heist at the African Intercontinental Bank, Agbor branch fetched him about N46,000.00 not more than USD$10,000 (at the time), a mere USD$150 (going by current exchange rate of $1 = N305)

These suit and tie Anini's have plundered more than $7billion put together from a state of not more than 4 million people and eight (8) Local Government Areas causing unimaginable economic and social asperity on the people. They run to foreign lands for medical check up every now and then but our people are left behind to be made medical experiment of the efficacy of roots and herbs. We sometimes end up as experiments to test the technical know-how of our ill equipped medical practitioners who are products of our ailing educational system.

One of our Anini's suffered a chronic medical condition before he passed away. He was in Dubai for treatment but had to abandon it to return to Nigeria where he explored his Presidential pardon much to the chagrin of the victimized public. Very recently, another sent his wife to America where she put to birth. Much to the delight of the ignorant populace who have been made to die from minor illness in the state due to lack or neglect of the Health sector by our Anini's. I wish Bayelsa had a fully functional tertiary hospital like those in Dubai and America.

I do wish Bayelsa had the sort of leaders that Dubai and America had, leaders who would build and equip hospitals that people crossed deserts and continents to attend. Leaders who would invest in the educational sector and build schools that countries will send their citizens on scholarship to attend. Leaders who would prioritize the education of her people in lieu of religion. Leaders who will understand that at 20, the state is still dependent on external borrowings to pay salaries and the need to diversify the economy. I do sometimes wish Bayelsa would have leaders who would see the many opportunities in tourism. Leaders who understands the entails of selfless service.

Why would anyone, laying claims to sanity, stash millions of dollars in her account and have no good health facility where she's from. Prudence, the sort that encourages wealth accumulation, will dictate otherwise.

What kind of sickness will a man be possibly suffering from that he would need $31.4million dollars to treat if not greed? Yes, greed is the only ailment even such staggering amount will not cure. Greed is the only sickness that cause compulsive accumulation disorder that afflicts our politicians and not prudence.

Anini's reign was finally brought to an end on December 3, 1986, by Uanreroro who acted on a tip-off from the locals. The policeman went straight to the house where Anini was hiding and apprehended him with very little resistance. After Anini was captured and dispossessed of his charms, the man who terrorised a whole state and who was supposed to be fearless suddenly became remorseful, making confessions. This was against public expectation of a daredevil hoodlum who would remain defiant to the very end. It is instructive to note that the Police acted based on a tip off from locals in thesame state Anini hails from.

Anini, who was more generous than our politicians was ratted on by locals he shared his booty with. Men who could no longer endure their aversion for stealing and the shame Anini was bringing to the entire state gave the only Law enforcement agency then the tip off. The irony here is that our politicians have a way of mesmerizing us. They have manage to appropriate some degree of sainthood to themselves. They plunder the common heritage, fan divisive embers to generate a smokescreen, and conscript the conscience of the poor.

Bayelsans who wouldn’t mind lynching a petty thief to show their aversion for stealing would gullibly believe pen-robbers are witch-hunted, when probed. We shouldn’t be surprised if this article is greeted with so much aspersions and lampooning from my Ijaw brothers. We shouldn't be surprised if I am accused of selling the Ijaw nation out. That is how we have deified our true enemies within. The critical question facing us remains thus: Why do we continue to succumb to the machinations of those saboteurs masquerading as leaders who continue to be agents of our collective destruction? It is this question that leads logically to one of the major challenges confronting us today and which is an internal imperative that must be resolved for Ijaw nation to progress.  This imperative is one of leadership within Ijaw nation.  Are we going to allow ourselves to be led by individuals whose agenda is selfish, narrow, and continue to perpetuate a slavish relationship with the powers of the Nigerian state?

There has been all sorts of offensive publications on social media lately. Some people are asking the anti graft to leave our 'Enemies Within' alone. Our brothers who are elected and appointed into public offices are responsible for our impoverished state yet some self serving Bayelsans have identified to collaborate with them to deprive us of our only succor.

The represented who are doubly victimized, rise to their defence, deflect their guilt and render praise. Such identification have sanctified and  enslaved. The poor masses embrace the delusion that they owe support to the thieving politician with whom they share a kind of primitive identification or association with. “He is our brother.” Ethnicities and religions own people in this country, not the nation.

The monies the anti graft wants our brothers to account for, is it their personal money? The stewardship progressive minds want them to account for, is it the stewardship of their own Family? There is a better way to show solidarity with one’ s brother than this utterly reprehensible method of brazenly defending crime at the expense of the peasant farmers, labourers, civil servants, carpenters, petty traders, school teachers and others.

There are better ways in rewarding stewardship than losing ones mind to sycophancy and obtuse reasoning.

Enough of the publicity given to alleged looters and their being treated with kid gloves, some of us wouldn’t mind who goes to jail or for how many years they are sentenced to once they are found guilty and convicted as such.

I can’t pretend I don’t understand what our looters are going through in this anti corruption crusade. But it is a feeling that can be checked by thinking about thousands in many horrible cells in our jails who are there because they stole sums and items comparably infinitesimal and inconsequential.

Those who changed political ship are still enjoying their loots and their integrity is still intact. But this doesn't make light of the calamity our brothers have brought on us.

"Why him, why her? Some have asked. Is she, or he the only thief in Nigeria? Why don't the EFCC go after X, Y, Z? After all, Amaechi is still a Minister and Tinubu is still posing as Mr. Integrity, loved by his people. Why this Niger Delta son?"

I have pondered about the above posers several times and each time i came to the unavoidable conclusion that the answer will not create jobs for my people or cause our leaders to have attitudinal change towards Leadership.

Amaechi was never a Governor of Bayelsa state. And even if he was corrupt and enjoying immunity as a result of his romance with the center, Niger Deltans should find solace in the fact that he is a Niger Deltan as well.

Tinubu was never a Permanent Secretary in Bayelsa state, neither is he from Bayelsa. Most progressive elements who wants our leaders to give veritable account of their stewardship are Bayelsans and not Lagosians.

All have sinned, but we won't open Okaka prison and ask thousands of poor inmates to go home. That will amount to questioning our reasoning. If we do not begin to hold our leaders accountable, we will soon lose the right to cry cheated.

Aluzu Ebikebuna Augustine is a Human Rights Activist and can be reached on ebikebuna@gmail.com

BAYELSA: RESTORATION OR DICTATORSHIP? ~ By Dei Badou

BAYELSA: RESTORATION OR DICTATORSHIP?

By -Dei B. Badou

The restoration administration-led by Hon. Henry Seriake Dickson appeared like another form of dictatorship in which he or his appointed committees holds absolute power at the exclusion of the people and even the state Assembly.

Right from its inception, the restoration government is anchored on dictatorship. He has governed Bayelsa for almost 5 years, most of that time as a dictator. His promises to restore and build Bayelsa into a great state were all promises of hopelessness and in futility; rather they are all promises in dehydrating Bayelsans.

Close to his second term ambition for the governorship, he took the title of [OFURUMOPEPE] meaning White Shark. He could hardly fulfill any of the promises made to the people in his four years in office; could not even reduce unemployment and improve the various economic sub-sectors for effective productivity, rather the price of the restoration agenda was the enslavement of Bayelsans.

This is an administration that came to power under conditions of turmoil and confusion, predecessor administration-led by Chief Timipre Sylva allegedly unable to provide the people the needed security, basic amenities through bad governance in 2012.

As a result, Abuja-based PDP political elite-led by the former President Goodluck Jonathan, late Col Sam Inokoba (rtd) and others seized power through political trickery in the highest form of revolutionary means and ousted it.

Since its takeover in 2012, the dictator and his followers retain their positions through force or threat of force, abolishes or closely controls the state legislature, rendering it impotent and a rubber stamp and quickly suppress freedom of speech, assembly and the press.

It sets up an elaborate secret-police system that monitors and detects opponents of the administration; persons who object the dictatorial rule are persecuted.  Familiar example of this dictatorship is the locking up of Tonye Okio at Okaka Prison without any justifiable reasons, sacking of a court process allegedly sponsored by dictatorial system in Yenagoa, the state capital and many other dictatorial tendencies.

A dictatorship that has power of life and death without appeal to the people or the state Assembly, but he could not leave the state and had no control of the state treasury. Dictators are known world-wide for their centralized dictating system that allows people to dictate from different locations to a central office.

With this system put in place by the dictator, the people dictating may use a regular telephone or a special micro-phone that is connected to telephone lines hence persons who objects to the dictator are detected and prosecuted even when on overseas trips.

The present dictatorship in Bayelsa lacks knowledge of ethics and politics that enable people to act properly and live happily knowing very well that the goal of human beings is happiness and that the people achieve happiness when government fulfill its functions and obligations.

Therefore, it is necessary for the government of the day whose responsibility to determine what its social contract with the people are all about and not to torment and impoverish them in the name of TALK NA-DOISM, a political slogan that holds no water in the present circumstances.

The function of any good government is what, it alone can do or what it can do best for the people and not to deny, deprive, harass, intimidate, dehumanize, call them all sorts of names including unproductive human beings as was allegedly used by the dictatorship on retirees.

For example, the function of the eye is to see, so also the function of the knife is to cut. It is said of old that a human being is a “rational animal” whose function is to reason, before acting and therefore a rational government is to provide a happy life for human beings under its control is a life government by reason and responsibility.

It is the general belief of the people that a government which has difficulty behaving ethically such as depriving and denying its people from getting their wages is morally imperfect. The ideal government practices behaving reasonably, responsibly and properly and until the government can do so naturally and without efforts amount to nothing.

It is also a general belief in governance parlance that moral virtue is a matter of avoiding extremes in behavior and finding instead the mean between the extremes. For instance, the virtue of courage is the mean between the vices of cowardice at one extreme and foolhardiness at the other.
Similarly, the virtue of generosity is the mean between stinginess and wastefulness. Therefore government has probably been the single most influential work in all literary criticism which examines the nature of the tragedy that has befallen the people and takes as its prime objective of ameliorating tragedy that afflicts the people.

It is a generally held views that when tragedy affects a people by arousing the emotions of pity and fears resulting in non-payment of workers salaries and wages; it takes sincere and honest government to purify and cleanse the people of these emotions.

By doing so, it clearly exemplifies a serious and people-oriented government other than a dictatorial government that is full of deceit, greed, selfishness, egotism and self-enrichment.

The present government in Bayelsa should not continuously attribute its inability to pay workers salaries to dwindling revenues. After all, Bayelsa under the self-styled restoration government in the past four years 2012-2015 received huge sums of money from the Federal Government without completing and commissioning any of the projects embarked upon.

So also, there is no known project executed and completed with the [#95.4bn] received between May 2015 and June 2016 except frivolous expenditures in the circles of power politics and power-play in the state during the last governorship election.

Bayelsa with a population of a little over two million people requires good governance and not a government of the wicked for the wicked and of the wicked equals to dictatorship as superimposed on the people by Jonathan and his self-styled PDP political elite.

After all a pot cannot call the kettle black neither the kettle can call the pot black.  Between 2011 and 2015, the Goodluck Jonathan-led Federal Government awarded 38 contracts for different projects in Bayelsa State. Though the total sum is worth Two Hundred and Nine Billion, Six Hundred and Seventy-Nine Million, Seven Hundred and Seventy-one Thousand and Seventy-five Naira [#209.690, 779, 771 . 75K], the projects which are meant to benefit Bayelsa people were all abandoned after due payments were made to Jonathan’s contractors.

Where on earth can this happen and the person goes scot-free if one may ask? It can only happen  in a state like Bayelsa where political leaders and elders in their late seventies and early eighties serve as sycophantic parasites and gofers to every government that come on board because of lack of skills in entrepreneurship.

Even those who were opportune to go to either state Assembly for eight years and later House of Representatives or the Senate for another four years come back home to seek even a Local Government Chairman or Special Adviser, Senior Special Assistant appointments for survival just because they have nothing upstairs economically and become drawers of wood and fetcher of water, hence Bayelsa’s industrial development atrophies.

At the political level they claimed to be the best in the circles of politics whereas at the entrepreneurial level, they lack even a single segment of skill and experience to even move their families economically not to take of moving Bayelsa State to economic prosperity.

It is high time these political juggernauts, caterpillars, bulldozers, folk-lifts  and swarm-buggies as they called themselves think of keying into the economic sector by creating investment opportunities for our jobless youths and for the state to move economically forward rather than perpetually engage in politics of sycophancy and parasitism.