Open Letter To Omehia
His Excellency, Sir. Celestine Omehia, it is with a deep sense of joy and thanksgiving to God that I write you this letter, commending your undaunted gesture and effort in curbing cultists and militants by deploying the men of Joint Task Force to all the nooks and crannies of Port Harcourt, the Rivers State Capital, no matter the myriad of clarion calls for a state of emergency in the State, by some (un)patriotic persons from Rivers and Delta States respectively, whose names are in print; now we know who the real devils, cultists, militants and their agents are in Rivers State.
His Excellency, as much as you like rehabilitating the cultists/militants who may want to be rehabilitated, I want to let know that cultists/militants operating in the State might not be only the Rivers indigenes, albeit their lords or syndicates might be indigenes.
As a matter of factly, I wish to implore here that the Rehabilitation exercise should not only be monopolized to the indigenes alone, there are the Hausas, Ndi-Igbo, Yorubas, Tivs, Calabas, Cameroonians, and Ghanaians et al who live and do their various businesses in the State.
While the accusing finger is pointed on the Rivers indigenes, these ‘visitors’ might not be saints. Some of them might have not known their homelands since they were born; as a result, they follow their peers in doing whatever that is good or bad they could lay hands on.
Notwithstanding, Sir, you have said it the umpteenth time that, though you inherited cultists and militants, but your government will not condone any form of criminality, bestiality, cultism or militancy. It may interest you to note that while you are busy fighting to win this war, there are yet these sects of ‘cultists or militants’ who parade the streets, bushes of Rivers State, collecting ‘ill-legal’ revenues of what they called “development levy, basket levy, motor ticket’s levy, sanitation levy’ and all that levies that the government might be innocent of. And they use various local governments’ receipts to cover-up and loot people. And, any of their victims that resist paying might haplessly watch his building being razed down, his car being ‘illegally’ impounded, and all other frustrations. Sometimes they use the State’s LOGO or receipts too. These sects of cultists or militants are making the status of the Garden City turn Garden of touts.
Sir, these sects of groups even ask companies, investors to pay what they called “Matching ground”, (that is money before they could invest; build the Rivers roads or projects). In the eyes of other Nigerians, this act is painting Rivers State black.
However, while you are busy as well sending the Rivers youths to study abroad, some, their Masters degrees, according to you, with the sum of E 50,000 to 70,000 I pray you in the same spirit put money in our local schools so that those who can’t pass the protocols of the scheme to study abroad can conveniently study here, at home. I also urge you, in the same spirit, to emancipate the so called “non-indigenes” in your government, in the rehabilitation exercise, in the programme of the making of 100 millionaires in the first six months of your assumption of office, and all sundry. By so doing, the war against cultists/militants could be won once and for all. Because, according to an axiom, “An idle man/mind is a Satan’s workshop”, and this knows no creek, tribe or race. Just my observations!
Thanks,
Odimegwu Onwumere,
Oyigbo, Rivers State, Nigeria.
