Gov. Amaechi’s Plane: Where Is The Governor’s Immunity?

Rivers State Governor, Rt. Hon Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi

Totalitarianism is progressively returning to the country in an excuse of fighting Governor Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers State. Nigerians are standing and watching with self-pity, oblivious that such pity itself is the worst enemy.

The Federal Government (FG) is subduing Amaechi and at the same time fighting him, while posing Sun Tzu's idea of fighting a war which says that to fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

The other day, it was the Commissioner for Information of the state who was invited and quizzed in Abuja by the security adviser to the president in order to find out what the two planes said were bought by Amaechi were all about.

The presidency wanted to find out if the planes were meant for the purportedly 2015 elections by Amaechi. The commissioner told the agent that invited her all that she knew about the planes in the tone that they were bought for surveillance around the state.

Today, while on a mission for the burial of the Deputy Governor of Ekiti State, Funmilayo Olayinka, the presidency through its apparatus in the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency stranded the Bombardier – BD700 Global Express aircraft of Amaechi in Akure, Ondo State on Friday April 26, in what it described as the pilot's alleged failure to make-available the manifest of the plane.

When this was done, the presidency's agency said that the plane was operating illegally and as a result, is temporarily grounded. Amaechi swiftly made his voice known in the clutter, describing the action as a continuation of attack on him by the presidency, and did not rule out the fact that the action was shameful and embarrassing.

While the agency that grounded the plane said that it did so, on the condition that the pilot was incapable to provide the manifest of the plane, a statement by the Chief Press Secretary to Amaechi, David Iyofor, is pointing on a different direction.

In the statement made available to newsmen, Amaechi said that NAMA and the aviation authorities are playing the ostrich by saying that they grounded the plane because the pilot did not file a flight plan and declare a manifest. Amaechi said that the pilot indeed, filed the flight plan and manifest, and paid all the legislative airport fees and charges before-long, after the plane arrived at the Akure airport in the afternoon.

The question that Amaechi has been asking is that if the pilot filed a flight plan and manifest at the airports in Abuja and Owerri they had been, where he flew from same day, why won't he then do the same in Akure.

While that question is salient, it behooves Nigerians to know that determined power is an enemy of democracy. It is indeed shameful, and Nigerians should wonder where this tyrannical features orchestrated against Amaechi will take the country to. Weeping for the presidency cannot solve any problem. Amaechi may be intimidated, but the Truth can never be intimidated or suppressed.

John F. Kennedy in one of his speeches said that the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.... It is observably that there has been different interpretation to whatever that Amaechi does in the media, making the presidency to swim in propaganda against the dude. This is one of the weapons that the presidency is using against Amaechi, and he is lackadaisical to correct majority of the ill-impressions the presidency had sold to the populace against him.

If a sitting governor can be disgraced in such a blatant manner, hence the question of the immunity clause in the Constitution is outstanding. Is this act meted out against a sitting governor not despotic? Can the president in like manner be shown such disdain in the pretense that he did not comply with the due process of the aviation business? The presidency makes Nigerians to believe that it is far from autocracy whereas it is near.

No matter all the perceived misapplications against Amaechi by the presidency, Nigerians cannot avoid the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer which say that the essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.

The embarrassment shown to Amaechi is an embarrassment to all, owing to the caliber and number of people that were to fly with Amaechi for the two hours he was held hostage in Akure. Is the presidency not setting a bad precedent? Is the presidency not becoming unbearable and trivial? Is the country not slowly-but-surely downhilling into a fiefdom?

While it is imperative to say that nobody is above the law, what about the immunity that Amaechi was expected to enjoy? When would the leaders comply with what Isaac Newton said that Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy? It is pertinent to say that Amaechi's life is in danger in the hands of those scuttling him and he should however watch how he flies and conduct his activities, because next time may be to plant a bomb on the plane.

Odimegwu Onwumere, Poet/Author, is the Coordinator, Concerned Non-Indigenes In Rivers State (CONIRIV). Phone: +2348032552855 (OR) +2348057778358. Email: [email protected]