Game Of Death In Rivers State

By Steve Nwosu

I’m not used to too much prayer, but I must begin today’s piece with a word of prayer. I pray that God Almighty visits the killers of Barr. Ken Atsuwete (and their sponsors) with slow and painful death. Amen!
I pray that the divine punishment for the dastardly act of Monday constitutes the largest chunk of the inheritance, which the killers (and their sponsors) would pass on to their children and their children’s children in the fullness of time. Amen and Amen and Amen!

But, one question kept coming to my mind on Monday, as I tried to make sense of the senseless abduction and murder of the activist lawyer in Port Harcourt: Aren’t we back to a not-too-unfamiliar narrative? For, it would appear, Rivers State relapses into a feast of blood as soon as a new date for the now-jinxed re-run election is within the horizon.

Everything – including kidnapping, armed robbery and, as is in this case, heinous assassination – suddenly begins to take a political coloration. It is either that ‘blood-thirsty’ Governor Nyesom Wike is trying to intimidate opponents with violence (the APC narrative), or Rotimi Amaechi and his APC gang are unleashing mayhem in order to underscore their claim that Rivers State is not safe for any election to hold there.

And now, the murder of Atsuwete perfectly fits the bill: He is not only the lawyer of a former council chairman, who is facing trial in a murder case, but is also representing the 22 council chairmen elected on the platform of the APC and who were sacked by the Wike administration.

Expectedly, the APC says the lawyer’s assassination is the worst politically motivated killing in recent times, while PDP says the APC is politicising criminality and trivialising a serious matter. But while they’re vomiting all the high-sounding nonsense, somebody’s husband, a father, a breadwinner, a community leader, a voice of the voiceless lies stone cold. Dead!

Incidentally, while members of the NBA were holding their conference in Port Harcourt last week, I had fantasised about some hooded goons kidnapping a few prominent (and some not-so-prominent) lawyers – just to underscore the narrative that Rivers State was still not safe. Luckily, it never happened.

But before Wike and his camp could pop champagne, the goons mowed down Atsuwete, casting ominous pall over the proposed end-of-October date for the legislative re-run elections.
Of course, it’s understandable: The ‘insecurity’ narrative is the thin thread on which the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has hung its stubborn refusal to conduct outstanding National and State Assembly elections in Rivers State.