Ngex.com

17 Feb 2011

NIgeria: Human Sacrifice At PDP Port Harcourt Rally: Matters Arising

Ifeanyi Izeze

With due respect to the souls of the departed innocent, economically deprived rented ordinary women and unemployed young men of Niger Delta that lost their lives during the stampede at the venue of the South –South launch of President Goodluck Jonathan’s presidential campaign in Port Harcourt on Saturday February 12th 2011, there are serious matters that are being swallowed by the politics of this ugly incident.

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What happened in Port Harcourt was more serious than just casually dismissing it as mismanagement of the crowd. It was very obvious that somebody somewhere passed a vote of no confidence on all the security agencies in the entire south- south (local) to protect President Jonathan and his entourage. This is very serious because if a section of the Nigerian Police, Joint Military Taskforce (JTF) and the SSS could not be trusted to protect and provide adequate security for the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, then there is something very wrong somewhere. And I hope everybody sees what I am seeing in this whole matter.

If there was actually a security threat, couldn’t it have been handled better and more professionally rather than openly announcing that the security team from Abuja was taking over the affairs from the south- south security agencies. What a shame!

The panel of investigation should reconcile what actually happened between the Abuja security team and their local colleagues as this will help avert a repeat of the naked dance in Port Harcourt by the Presidential guard. In as much as this piece is not set out to apportion blames to anybody, the Port Harcourt tragedy also brought to fore the bitter truth that almost everybody that died in the stampede were poor, village women who were criminally pulled from their farms and markets to wear the green-white-red colours of the PDP by better life affirmative privileged party women paid by the governors and their cronies.

Anybody who challenges the above assertion should ask the affected state governments to publish the profiles of the deceased. It is very unfortunate the way things go on in this country. We are talking of the Port Harcourt tragedy just because of the loss of lives. The practice of using rural women and unemployed youths for crowd effect is not only a PDP practice, all the political parties are culprits of this sin and it should be addressed.

Come to think of it! How much do these crowd-renting contractors pay these women and young men? Most times between N500- N1, 500 depending on the distance of travel to the venue of the political rally.

Most of these village women that are normally brought to crowd political campaigns are often widows with children and other dependants to carter for. Just imaging a situation where a woman who has been managing to carry on with life after the death of the husband dies in such a tragic circumstance. What happens to the children left behind? No amount of money the politicians will give the families can solve the problems such deaths will create for the people left behind.

The Rivers state government should thank God that the security men that caused the deaths came from Abuja, if they were Port Harcourt police, Amaechi would have been in a very deep mess because nobody would have believed they were not sponsored to cause the crisis and embarrassed the president and his team.