Re: Okiro and the militants
By Chief C. I. Ugwuoha
Saturday, August 25, 2007
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•Okiro
Photo: Sun News Publishing |
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You will do well to publish this rejoinder, if indeed you
were unbiased in your views as expressed in the article in quote and if indeed
you were not on a smear campaign against the acting IGP.
I have always
enjoyed your juicy articles until I went through your piece of August 15th 2007.
I felt and rightly that you did a shoddy, hatchet job. You had the facts but chose
to ignore them, admitting narrow interpretations to biased, cancerous end.
First, you did MASSOB a great disservice by linking the body to mayhem in
Onitsha. You cannot dismiss lawlessness with a wave of the hand. No body or organization
is licensed to cause wanton destruction of life and property. Your context tended
to excuse the lawlessness in Onitsha on the ground of activities of MASSOB members,
whatever that meant.
Not MASSOB, not MEND; no one is licensed to visit
violence on the society over whatever cause or matter. The acting IGP was right
in parading “Onitsha” militants, if militants now go by adjectives.
You failed to deny unrest in Onitsha. Your grouse was that it was not as pronounced
as that in, say Port Harcourt; and should have been treated with levity by the
IGP and handshake extended to the captured “MASSOB ACTIVISTS”.
Your
re-branding of Onitsha militants, your lame attempt at explaining away the kidnap
incidence there and your miasma of jaundiced views tilted against the IG is reprehensible.
Your warped analysis only made a grazing incidence on the IGP’s personal
presence in Port Harcourt. You did not acknowledge the heavy exchange of fire
there that claimed the lives of several cultists, with many others arrested and
undergoing interrogation.
The physical presence of the IG at a hot bed
of crime with the attendant risk to his own life went unrewarded in your treatise.
If you were in Okiro’s position I know you would be dictating from the safe
confines of Louis Edet house, away from the thundering streets and bleeding roads.
I will not delve further into other views you expressed in your disparate article
since there was clearly no attempt at disguising your predisposition. You did
a shoddy job, Mr. Steve. The IG deserves an apology.
EDITOR'S
NOTE Chief Ugwuoha
is also free to defend the IG, but it would also be proper to note that not anywhere
in said article was the activities of militants and kidnappers praised or encouraged.
The writer did not also deny that such crimes existed in Onitsha nor that the
arrested men were not kidnappers.
Irrespective of what anyone feels, however,
available facts indicate that there are more cases of kidnapping in the Niger
Delta states than Onitsha and that if there is any region the development has
reached an emergency situation, it is in the Niger Delta states.
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