ESO PANEL REPORT: WHAT ODILI SHOULD DO?
BY: IFEANYI IZEZE
Most of our political leaders have as aides people who advise them either out of ignorance or because they want to keep advising them by wrongly advising them every time they have opportunity to carry out such function.
How else would anybody describe the response by the former governor of Rivers state, Dr Peter Odili on his so -called indictment by the Justice Kayode Eso-led Rivers Truth and Reconciliation Commission if not to say that it was very unnecessary and ill-advised?
There was no need whatsoever for the series of response running in the media as Dr Odili remains an incontrovertible elderstatesman not only of Rivers state but of the entire Niger Delta irrespective of individual opinions on this assertion. And anybody who sits in Port Harcourt or elsewhere in the region believing that Odili has been stripped of his elderstatesmanship must be day-dreaming and need to wake up his or her ideas. And this is the reason why the former governor’s running responses have angered the very few remaining straight minds in Rivers and in the Niger Delta region.
Odili was very correct and human in his first reaction when he declared that the recommendations contained in the report he described as a “product of biased minds” did not come to him as a surprise. The reasons for his assertion were as clear as they were obvious.
He alleged that the report of the commission was “pre-determined and guided to achieve an ignoble purpose,” meaning that the commission was set up mainly to smear his image and hard-earned reputation.
His words: “Clearly, no truth and reconciliation was intended by those who conceived the idea of the commission, and given the trend so far, I dare say that no reconciliation can be achieved.
“It is obvious today that while there is no effective reconciliation of many Rivers people, the only truth revealed by Justice Eso’s commission report is that malice and vendetta was the essence of the commission.”
To all genuine and straight-minded people within and outside the state, Odili’s indictment was very much in order as he was the figure head of the Rivers state Government and the chief security officer when the crisis started and snowballed into the shameful level witnessed in the state.
As far as public judgment was concerned, the former governor instituted, nurtured and empowered the various gangs that rained mayhem on the people of the state. So the Eso-Panel did not say anything that was not common sense in that regard.
Governor Amaechi himself was merely acting or rather feigning pain as he described the day of the submission of the report as the saddest day of his life, because of the damming indictment of Odili by the Eso commission.
And as he rightly pointed out, Amaechi cannot extricate himself from the failures of the Odili administration as he was a critical part of it. Agreed that when he was the former Speaker of the state’s House of Assembly, he drafted and got the anti-cult bill passed but the blurred definition of who and what constitutes a cult group paralysed the entire effort even right at the floor of the Assembly under Amaechi’s glaring supervision.
As an eye witness, the entire membership of House of Assembly was divided between seadogs and virkings as the pyrates in the House were very bitter for being joined as a cult group.
So how would any one have expected a billed that was still- born to work and knowing fully well the involvement of the executive in the entire racket? It was well expected that such bill will never be implemented. This is just an aside!
Odili was very correct when he asserted in his response that as at today there is no effective reconciliation of many Rivers people. This is the blank truth. And this is where he was expected to have cashed-in and win back his glory in the state as an undisputed elderstatesman.
Though the opportunity still exists to correct whatever wrong- real or perceived that he did while in office as the governor of the state, the series of press statements on his condemnation or rather rubbishing of the entire report rather than bring him closer back home, is pulling him further away from the people whom he loved and served in his own “best understanding” under the conditions that prevailed at his time.
The former governor should be deeply involved in damage limitation rather than the current campaign to prove his ignorance because nobody, and I mean nobody even the cabals hanging around him in Abuja would in their hearts of heart believe him.
If I were the former governor, the only thing to do now would be to publicly apologize to the Rivers people for all that transpired and ask for forgiveness. If this is done, it would be very unscriptural and devilish for all the men of God (churches and mosques) who were part of the alleged Odili’s plundering of the state funds and who have now switched camp to the Amaechi government, not to appeal to the conscience of the allegedly aggrieved people of the state to forgive the former governor.
The problem is that our leaders have completely lost what made us tick as a people. Which is easier to do- run a media campaign to exonerate himself or for Odili as a bold leader he was and still is to simply say: My Rivers people please forgive me for whatever wrongs that happened under my leadership of the state as the governor. I am sorry. Please forgive me. If Odili can do this in whatever language or package walahi he will be forgiven the same day by God and man and whosoever brings the matter up will only be stepping forward as the real enemy of truth and reconciliation in the state.
IFEANYI IZEZE IS AN ABUJA-BASED CONSULTANT ON POLITICAL STRATEGY AND PUBLIC CONSULTATION ( iizeze@yahoo.com )
