HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP TACKLES AMAECHI ON SECURITY 

THE Port Harcourt-based Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law(IHRHL) has taken on the Rivers State Governor, Chibuike Amaechi, on his administration's security policy.

Speaking in an interview with our correspondent yesterday, the Executive Director of the group, Anyankwee Nsirimovu, said they want Governor Amaechi to openly admit the failure of aspects of his administration's past security  policy, and turn a new policy page that should be bottom-up, most participatory, rather than putting the cat before the horse, as he allegedly did with his well intended but misconceived Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Rehabilitation Centres, which should properly come after  amnesty and decommissioning rather than before it.

''Amnesty Demobilization, Decommissioning and Rehabilitation is not an option that can be shaded in this process, if peace must reign again in our domain. This is critically important, so that all his well intentioned construction sites in the state would not be foundations built on sand, which is what it would amount to, in the absence of effective human security in the state'', the group said. 

Continuing, Nsirimovu who was a member of the Ledum Mitee-led Niger Delta Technical Committee (NDTC) said the real test of Amaechi’s years in Rivers state would be his ability to bring peace and security to bear in the state, not more, adding, ''others would be added value''.  

In an on-line statement earlier, the group claimed that they welcomed a recent statement credited to the governor condemning Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria for its alleged abysmal failure to meet its corporate social responsibility to its host communities under the Global Memorandum of of Understanding agreement,(GMOU), during an on-site tour of one of Shell’s

Community development  project in Afam in Oyigbo Local Government Area of the state.  

Amaechi who was most disappointed upon seeing the pettiness of projects executed for the Afam community, vehemently  referred to it as projects that fail to add value to the communities concerned.

IHRHL also noted another  statement credited to the governor, where he took a clear stand on the un-seriousness and careless attitude of the Federal Government on fundamental issues bothering on the  Niger Delta region – the goose that lays the golden egg.

While addressing an audience in Washington DC , recently. Amaechi reportedly linked the incidence of agitation and poverty in the oil and gas region to the ''oppressive laws'' operated by the federal government. ''We are a very unfortunate people because the Federal government and the oil companies don’t care'', the governor reportedly said.

The human rights group however, noted that until now, ''the state-oil nexus has shown the state to take sides with oil multinationals against its own citizens. A characteristic of the state in recent past has been its tendency to fall prey to private individual and group interests. In this process, the state which normally should be the guarantor of the collective interests of entire people, becomes an instrument for pursuing private interests, often using the force apparatus of the State to maim and destroy its own people. The destruction of Umuechem community in Etche local government area of Rivers state is a clear examples. Other examples abound throughout the region''.

According to them, ''this very shift in utterance and hopefully policy is important because the failure of the states  governments of the region, especially so, Rivers State, to take its primary responsibility of protecting and defending the interests of its citizens and communities was directly responsible for the vacuum that helpless citizens seized for purposes of self-help to secure their basic existence''.

Adding, they said, ''we have had in the region politicians who heaped their primary obligations and loyalties in the same federal government in Abuja, that the governor now attacks, because capacity to even become a local government counselor in the region is derived from Abuja, and not from the peoples of the region. Politics and governance in the region became a patronage system of pleasing the helmsmen in Abuja in exchange for extreme poverty and impunity for the citizens of the region''.

''The absence of executive and legislative leadership at all levels in the region was directly responsible for some helpless and frustrated  youths in the region to resort to arms. The politicians rather than abate the crisis, aided it in furtherance of their  pursuit of illicit power. They openly tolerated thuggery, cultism, proliferation of small arms and light weapons, political violence, massive election rigging and outright human slaughter'', the group said.

In the mean time, while commending the governor for his ''remarkable statements'', the IHRHL pleaded with him not only to speak it, but act out his script in terms of operative policy  framework,  in the state.

''This, in our estimation, would manifest in fundamental transformation of his militaristic stance on matters bothering on genuine militancy in the region, to one favouring effective trust and confidence building, dialogue leading to effective amnesty, decommissioning and rehabilitation  of youths, some of whom live according to him, in about 3,000 creeks in Rivers , without care.

''By this, the governor will  seriously be dealing   with the symptoms of the disease that has so  ravaged the region and its people, rather than tinker with the surface of the wound only. Secondly, this transformation in thought and policy would enable the government denote the genuine agitators, from those criminals who are taking advantage of our pains and sufferings to make the state and communities ungovernable, through daily kidnapping and hostage taking,  by reason  of state failure'', they said.