December 12, 2008
The Government of the Cross River State, since 1999, must take vicarious responsibility for the destruction of Nigeria’s democratic institutions everywhere; and also for the culture of violence that is becoming endemic.
So much of the fraud and dishonesty, the extreme brutality with which public affairs are conducted in most states of Nigeria today, were learnt from the Cross River State. Col. Tony Nyam, an indigene of the state who in 2003 was on Chief Obasanjo’s campaign team, recently told the National LIFE newspaper that he went home to help the campaign, only to find that there was no election at all in the State. Yet the electoral commission had registered 1.2million phantom voters in the state, and when the results were out, Obasanjo had “polled” 1.2million, and the governorship candidate, 1.1million. There was no other state with such ruthless efficiency in the game of fraud.
It is also from the Cross River State that certain state governors have learnt to recruit their police commands into turning their guns on the people, working with Janjaweed kind of thugs to effect unlawful purposes. Investigations may well show that that was why the latest Jos riots claimed so many lives. Police guns turned on the people! The only outstanding lesson Nigeria has to lesson from Cross River is how to render the law courts absolutely ineffective, and to hold the judges in crippling fear.
On the 6th of April 2008, I was capped as Obong of Calabar at our ancient kingship shrine, according to tradition and according to law. In spite of the fact that the laws of the Cross River State give no interventionist powers to Government, the State administration rallied the full force of the Mobile/Regular police and sundry private hit squads working with Government, some of them active in the Niger Delta, and purported to have capped a rival candidate, one month after. Before they had the chance of carrying out that fatal sacrilege, we took both the government and the minority group of kingmakers working with them to court; yet the Cross River State Government proceeded, not only to unlawfully cap the fellow, but also to accord him recognition. My lawyer friends tell me, that when a matter comes before the court both parties are required to freeze the status quo, and not engage in self-help. This rule applies everywhere, except in the Cross River State.
Accordingly, we have filed a motion at the Calabar High Court, requesting a reversal to status quo; ante both the so- called second capping and the illegal recognition. Meanwhile, we prayed the court to restrain the other party (government and the minority group of kingmakers) from carrying out the coronation they are planning for their protégée. The court, presided over by Justice Bassey Ikpeme, declined, and we lodged an appeal at the Court of Appeal. The government protégée, Ekpo Okon Abasi Otu, deposed on oath, at the Court of Appeal that he had “not made any arrangement to be coronated at the Duke Town Presbyterian Church, Calabar …………. “ and that he is “not aware of any plans to coronate (him) during the pending (sic) of this suit ……….” (Affidavit sworn to in the Court of Appeal of Nigeria, holden at Calabar, pursuant to suit no. CA/C/114M/2008, 6th October,2008).
He also swore in the affidavit that he had not acted in any way to undermine the integrity or authority of the Court.
“That I have not done any act prejudicial to the determination of this suit, nor had I connivance (sic) with the 2nd respondent to break into Efe Asabo with armed policemen for the purpose of capping me”.
On the strength of that assurance, the matter was adjourned to mid-January 2009, yet both the government and Abasi-Otu’s group proceeded with arrangements for coronation on 13th December, 2008! This of course is to hand the court a fait- accompli in January, because they boast that no court sitting in Calabar will lift a finger against the Cross River State Government! It is true that judicial officers living and working in Calabar, have a certain trepidation about the State administration, with its murderous disposition.
In 2001, the administration did not have its way with Chief Magistrate Maria-Theresa Nsa, and so she was slaughtered like a ram at her residence by one of the Janjaweed type groups developed by Government, with the help of the police. The police arrested and put on trial, the dead woman’s only child, and by the time he was discharged and acquitted, he had lost his place in the University, and had been in prison for six years! Meanwhile, in a letter to the Commissioner of Police, dated 14th December 2002, the hit squad that carried out the slaughter wrote that they did it on the instruction of government (passed to them in writing by a member of the House of Representatives).
The letter also detailed other assignments the group had carried out for the State Government, including burning down the hotel of Ambassador – Obi-Odu, then serving in South Korea as Nigeria’s representative (and sundry assassinations). He was rumoured to be nursing governorship ambition, and in the Cross River State, that could be a capital offence. The police predictably showed no interest in this confession as they continued with the prosecution of the late Chief Magistrate’s son! It does appear however, that judicial officers, or at least quite a number of them, have got the message. They are not allowed to proceed or find against the Government of the State.
When we filed our matter, asking the State High Court to examine the facts of our selection and capping, as well as the ad baculum response of government, and say who is the Obong of Calabar, judge after judge declined to hear the case; and we concluded that it was in sensible regard for their safety. Four judges returned the case to the Chief Judge (we had raised objections to only one of them). The one hearing the case now, Justice Bassey Ikpeme, had similarly declined, but was compelled by the Chief Judge to hear it.
He refused to grant a routine injunction against government and its client group of kingmakers, and we took the matter to the Court of Appeal. Here they swore to an affidavit that they were not planning coronation; and when the matter was adjourned to January, proceeded to organize coronation for December, and announce it on State radio!
In the extremely repressive circumstance of the Cross River State, the predilections of government are the law. The courts are nothing before an administration that controls the Mobile police and has Janjaweed or Isakaba at its beck and call. There are no citizenship rights, and the right to aspire exists only for persons who are members of the ruling gang or those who tremble in their presence.
On August 25th 2008, they unleashed a massive force of Mobile/ Regular Police and Isakaba thugs on my residence, to slaughter me. They operated for three hours but could not find me. They tore down everything in their sight including wood work that is almost a century old; looted the place in terms of cash, jewelry, computer, telephones, loads of files etc. My wife and her bakery staff were brutalized and abducted, so were Etubom Dr. Akpanika who had brought police to arrest the first wave of attack carried out almost exclusively by Isakaba thugs, and an American researcher, Dr. Ivor Miller who was guest of my palace. Miller’s shirt was torn, his video camera smashed and his person thoroughly beaten up and dumped in an open van together with my wife, her staff, Dr. Akpanika, my personal driver and a night watch man.
The security man and driver are still languishing in prison custody for committing no offence known to Nigerian Law. The beating they received was so severe that the security man is probably maimed for life and the driver has undergone surgery! Police Commissioner Emmanuel Ezeozue who unleashed this combined force of the police and terror gang on my residence explains that they had come to my neighbourhood to arrest a murder suspect, whom they claim to have arrested at a kiosk opposite my residence. If that is so, what were they doing at my gate and in my residence?
The truth is that the Commissioner of Police as at the time of my capping, Mr. Innocent Ilozuoke, and the Deputy Governor, Mr. Effiok Cobham concocted a murder story with which to put away all the guards at the shrine and every young person associated with me. They claimed that the Vice Chairman of their Isakaba gang had been killed. My information is that up till today there is no proof of any such death or what might have killed him.
Government uses Isakaba in sundry battles. Three ancient towns, Ebijakara, Obom Itiat and Ikot Ana have been razed to the ground. If he is actually dead, the fellow could have fallen in any of those battles, or in their ceaseless bunkering of petroleum products (under police protection) at the NNPC depot in Calabar or their dangerous sea trade in the product. The so called dead man’s daughter was made to write a statement to the effect that she woke up in the night to see ten people killing her father. In a part of town where there is never light she saw and counted ten people, could identify them (has since given a list to the police) and had the presence of mind to re-enter the house, dress up and go to the police station to report the murder. And the assailants let her!
She claimed to have seen ten persons; meanwhile there are at least sixteen persons in prison custody, almost all with machete cuts inflicted on them by Isakaba, with the police in attendance. Some were abducted and have simply disappeared. Meanwhile, I am informed that Mr. Ezeozue has reworked the evidence to rope me in; that I sent the boys to go and kill the man. It does of course not matter that I never knew the person let alone have a quarrel with him. In 2000, Gov Donald Duke did the same thing to me and got away with it, arrested and tried me for the murder of a person I had never heard of. His successor is encouraged to employ the same method of work since his assassin -in- chief, Mr. Ezeozue, the Police Commissioner has not killed me thus far.
So much of the fraud and dishonesty, the extreme brutality with which public affairs are conducted in most states of Nigeria today, were learnt from the Cross River State. Col. Tony Nyam, an indigene of the state who in 2003 was on Chief Obasanjo’s campaign team, recently told the National LIFE newspaper that he went home to help the campaign, only to find that there was no election at all in the State. Yet the electoral commission had registered 1.2million phantom voters in the state, and when the results were out, Obasanjo had “polled” 1.2million, and the governorship candidate, 1.1million. There was no other state with such ruthless efficiency in the game of fraud.
It is also from the Cross River State that certain state governors have learnt to recruit their police commands into turning their guns on the people, working with Janjaweed kind of thugs to effect unlawful purposes. Investigations may well show that that was why the latest Jos riots claimed so many lives. Police guns turned on the people! The only outstanding lesson Nigeria has to lesson from Cross River is how to render the law courts absolutely ineffective, and to hold the judges in crippling fear.
On the 6th of April 2008, I was capped as Obong of Calabar at our ancient kingship shrine, according to tradition and according to law. In spite of the fact that the laws of the Cross River State give no interventionist powers to Government, the State administration rallied the full force of the Mobile/Regular police and sundry private hit squads working with Government, some of them active in the Niger Delta, and purported to have capped a rival candidate, one month after. Before they had the chance of carrying out that fatal sacrilege, we took both the government and the minority group of kingmakers working with them to court; yet the Cross River State Government proceeded, not only to unlawfully cap the fellow, but also to accord him recognition. My lawyer friends tell me, that when a matter comes before the court both parties are required to freeze the status quo, and not engage in self-help. This rule applies everywhere, except in the Cross River State.
Accordingly, we have filed a motion at the Calabar High Court, requesting a reversal to status quo; ante both the so- called second capping and the illegal recognition. Meanwhile, we prayed the court to restrain the other party (government and the minority group of kingmakers) from carrying out the coronation they are planning for their protégée. The court, presided over by Justice Bassey Ikpeme, declined, and we lodged an appeal at the Court of Appeal. The government protégée, Ekpo Okon Abasi Otu, deposed on oath, at the Court of Appeal that he had “not made any arrangement to be coronated at the Duke Town Presbyterian Church, Calabar …………. “ and that he is “not aware of any plans to coronate (him) during the pending (sic) of this suit ……….” (Affidavit sworn to in the Court of Appeal of Nigeria, holden at Calabar, pursuant to suit no. CA/C/114M/2008, 6th October,2008).
He also swore in the affidavit that he had not acted in any way to undermine the integrity or authority of the Court.
“That I have not done any act prejudicial to the determination of this suit, nor had I connivance (sic) with the 2nd respondent to break into Efe Asabo with armed policemen for the purpose of capping me”.
On the strength of that assurance, the matter was adjourned to mid-January 2009, yet both the government and Abasi-Otu’s group proceeded with arrangements for coronation on 13th December, 2008! This of course is to hand the court a fait- accompli in January, because they boast that no court sitting in Calabar will lift a finger against the Cross River State Government! It is true that judicial officers living and working in Calabar, have a certain trepidation about the State administration, with its murderous disposition.
In 2001, the administration did not have its way with Chief Magistrate Maria-Theresa Nsa, and so she was slaughtered like a ram at her residence by one of the Janjaweed type groups developed by Government, with the help of the police. The police arrested and put on trial, the dead woman’s only child, and by the time he was discharged and acquitted, he had lost his place in the University, and had been in prison for six years! Meanwhile, in a letter to the Commissioner of Police, dated 14th December 2002, the hit squad that carried out the slaughter wrote that they did it on the instruction of government (passed to them in writing by a member of the House of Representatives).
The letter also detailed other assignments the group had carried out for the State Government, including burning down the hotel of Ambassador – Obi-Odu, then serving in South Korea as Nigeria’s representative (and sundry assassinations). He was rumoured to be nursing governorship ambition, and in the Cross River State, that could be a capital offence. The police predictably showed no interest in this confession as they continued with the prosecution of the late Chief Magistrate’s son! It does appear however, that judicial officers, or at least quite a number of them, have got the message. They are not allowed to proceed or find against the Government of the State.
When we filed our matter, asking the State High Court to examine the facts of our selection and capping, as well as the ad baculum response of government, and say who is the Obong of Calabar, judge after judge declined to hear the case; and we concluded that it was in sensible regard for their safety. Four judges returned the case to the Chief Judge (we had raised objections to only one of them). The one hearing the case now, Justice Bassey Ikpeme, had similarly declined, but was compelled by the Chief Judge to hear it.
He refused to grant a routine injunction against government and its client group of kingmakers, and we took the matter to the Court of Appeal. Here they swore to an affidavit that they were not planning coronation; and when the matter was adjourned to January, proceeded to organize coronation for December, and announce it on State radio!
In the extremely repressive circumstance of the Cross River State, the predilections of government are the law. The courts are nothing before an administration that controls the Mobile police and has Janjaweed or Isakaba at its beck and call. There are no citizenship rights, and the right to aspire exists only for persons who are members of the ruling gang or those who tremble in their presence.
On August 25th 2008, they unleashed a massive force of Mobile/ Regular Police and Isakaba thugs on my residence, to slaughter me. They operated for three hours but could not find me. They tore down everything in their sight including wood work that is almost a century old; looted the place in terms of cash, jewelry, computer, telephones, loads of files etc. My wife and her bakery staff were brutalized and abducted, so were Etubom Dr. Akpanika who had brought police to arrest the first wave of attack carried out almost exclusively by Isakaba thugs, and an American researcher, Dr. Ivor Miller who was guest of my palace. Miller’s shirt was torn, his video camera smashed and his person thoroughly beaten up and dumped in an open van together with my wife, her staff, Dr. Akpanika, my personal driver and a night watch man.
The security man and driver are still languishing in prison custody for committing no offence known to Nigerian Law. The beating they received was so severe that the security man is probably maimed for life and the driver has undergone surgery! Police Commissioner Emmanuel Ezeozue who unleashed this combined force of the police and terror gang on my residence explains that they had come to my neighbourhood to arrest a murder suspect, whom they claim to have arrested at a kiosk opposite my residence. If that is so, what were they doing at my gate and in my residence?
The truth is that the Commissioner of Police as at the time of my capping, Mr. Innocent Ilozuoke, and the Deputy Governor, Mr. Effiok Cobham concocted a murder story with which to put away all the guards at the shrine and every young person associated with me. They claimed that the Vice Chairman of their Isakaba gang had been killed. My information is that up till today there is no proof of any such death or what might have killed him.
Government uses Isakaba in sundry battles. Three ancient towns, Ebijakara, Obom Itiat and Ikot Ana have been razed to the ground. If he is actually dead, the fellow could have fallen in any of those battles, or in their ceaseless bunkering of petroleum products (under police protection) at the NNPC depot in Calabar or their dangerous sea trade in the product. The so called dead man’s daughter was made to write a statement to the effect that she woke up in the night to see ten people killing her father. In a part of town where there is never light she saw and counted ten people, could identify them (has since given a list to the police) and had the presence of mind to re-enter the house, dress up and go to the police station to report the murder. And the assailants let her!
She claimed to have seen ten persons; meanwhile there are at least sixteen persons in prison custody, almost all with machete cuts inflicted on them by Isakaba, with the police in attendance. Some were abducted and have simply disappeared. Meanwhile, I am informed that Mr. Ezeozue has reworked the evidence to rope me in; that I sent the boys to go and kill the man. It does of course not matter that I never knew the person let alone have a quarrel with him. In 2000, Gov Donald Duke did the same thing to me and got away with it, arrested and tried me for the murder of a person I had never heard of. His successor is encouraged to employ the same method of work since his assassin -in- chief, Mr. Ezeozue, the Police Commissioner has not killed me thus far.
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