Date Published: 08/28/10

Sekibo’s Governorship Ambition Pushes Rivers To The Brink

Mr. Abiye Sekibo

Rivers state, is set to become a battleground between the Ikwerre and Okrika ethnic groups, no thanks to the ethnic dimension which the bid by a former minister of Transport Dr. Abiye Sekibo to wrest the governorship of the state from Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi in next year’s election has assumed.

A medical doctor, Sekibo is Okrika and served as Secretary to the Rivers State government under former Governor Peter Odili at about the same time Amaechi, whose Ikwerre make up over 60 percent of the population of the state, was Speaker of the State Assembly.

The confirmation that the struggle for political control of the state has assumed an ethnic dimension reared its head last Tuesday during the visit of Nigeria’s First Lady Dame Patience Jonathan to Rivers State. Mrs. Jonathan, a native of Okrika, had during the visit publicly rebuked Governor Amaechi for what she said was the governor’s insensitivity to the peculiar problems in her native Okrika which has locked legal horns with the governor over plans to demolish the waterfronts, a haven for criminals.

Sekibo’s camp which had been comatose for over two years seemed to find its voice last month and attempted to set up a parallel, but illegal Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) executive in Rivers State. The police responded by arresting the organizers, while Amaechi followed up by revoking the certificate of occupancy of the building used for the clandestine event.

Sekibo had made several unsuccessful attempts to get the new PDP national chairman, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo tamper with the composition of the Rivers PDP executive to accommodate the interests of his camp. The patron of Sekibo’s camp, Dr. Odili was a former classmate of the PDP national chairman.

“Amaechi is one of the very few detrabilised politicians around. Look at his transformation of Rivers State. He could have conveniently chosen the Ikwerre areas. Even his opponents would attest to the fact that he has been as fair to all the ethnic groups as humanly possible. The only thing these people who are now ethnic champions bequeathed to Rivers state, nay the world was militancy. You won’t blame Sekibo for constantly attacking Amaechi. He is yet to come to terms that Amaechi and not him the then heir apparent that bulldozed so many out of Odili’s way, is governor and a very popular one at that.

“It was the desperation to displace Chief Rufus Ada-George and the then APP in the 2002 council elections that led my friend Odili to commission Sekibo to arm hundreds of Okrika youths. It was after the elections that the Ateke Toms were unleashed on the world. Honestly, but for the amnesty programme, people like Sekibo would have been rounded up for sponsoring terrorism,” the PDP chieftain added.

A PDP national officer from the north decried what he said was the increasing meddlesomeness of First Lady Patience Jonathan and warned of its implications for President Jonathan.

Meanwhile it has emerged that top officials of the Rivers State government are mounting pressure on Amaechi to review the recent support for Jonathan he pulled through his South-south colleague-governors urging Jonathan to contest the 2011 presidential elections, and to curtail what they consider Mrs. Jonathan’s excesses in Rivers State.

“There is no need playing the ostrich anymore. There is no where the constitution says you must receive the President’s wife whenever she is visiting. It is matter of protocol, and this has been grossly abused by Mrs. Jonathan who is led into believing she can impose a governor here’