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18.03.2009 Feature Article

The Eso Panel Report: Rivers AC Is Right

The Eso Panel Report: Rivers AC Is Right
18.03.2009 LISTEN

Some people are just always exhibiting buffoonery or are always unwisely recalcitrant. If not, why on earth would anybody, let alone the once revered former governor of Rivers State, Dr. Peter Odili, on his so -called indictment by the Justice Kayode Eso-led Rivers Truth and Reconciliation Commission, say that the Commission was a waste of fund? Odili declared that the recommendations contained in the report were “product of biased minds”? 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 were the essence of the commission.”

While Dr. Odili is packaging his image on the newspapers over the indictment, the Publicity Secretary of Rivers State Action Congress, who is also the Media Consultant to Prince Tonye Princewill, the Leader of Rivers State A C, Chief Eze Chukwuemeka Eze said recently in an exclusive interview with newsmen in Port Harcourt that if not for the insistence of Prince Tonye TJT Princewill and the support of other Rivers State stake-holders that asked Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State to drop his Judicial Commission idea for Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the duo of Ex Governor Dr. Odili and Dr. Sekibo who was one time Minister of Transport, would have been imprisoned.

The media chief buttressed that the Judicial Commission would have had the powers to sit in judgment against any culprit. His words: “Instead of running down the Eso Panel Report by Dr. Odili and his cohorts', one would have expected them to act as Statesmen and apologize to the people of Rivers State and the entire country that their infamous reign has brought down the State to its knees and portray our State in bad light before the International Community. One also expected them to be courageous enough to thank Prince Tonye Pincewill whose foresight and political wisdom led to the setting up of a reconciliation Commission than the Judicial Commission the Governor has envisaged that would send them to prison after conviction immediately.”

But Princewill was not alone in that decision that Odili and co. ought to apologize to the people of Rivers State and indeed Nigerians, an ABUJA-BASED CONSULTANT ON POLITICAL STRATEGY AND PUBLIC CONSULTATION, Mr. Ifeanyi Izeze said in an article made available to newsmen that: 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. 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. 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.

Ikenga Igbo writes from Orumba, Anambra State.

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