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.
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.
This was the gist: Thousands of the ruling party supporters crowded into a sports stadium to hear Jonathan speak and present the governorship flags to the six aspirants in the south -south. Hundreds more people gathered outside around the gates. As soon as the governors finished receiving their flags, and the President was about to make his speech, some of the people, who had come to celebrate with the president and their governors began to leave.
Initially, the two gates of the stadium were opened. But the security personnel from Abuja under pretence of trying to manage the crowd shut the bigger gate pushing everybody to go through the smaller gate. Then a woman in the push fell down and the crowd started stepping on her, some other people fell subsequently, and more people were stepping on them, that was how the confusion started.
Now, when that happened, the mobile police men that came with the President, who were standing outside, shot into the air to scare others. They (MOPOL) released the shot into the air to stop further surge and rescue those on the ground. Unfortunately, that worsened the confusion and more people started pushing, rushing back, rushing forward, leading to more casualties. This was the official account.
However, what the government did not tell Nigerians was that there was a security alarm- a real or perceived threat to the President and other dignitaries at the event especially on the podium.
This security alarm must have informed an announcement by the master of ceremony, Julius Agwu, who asked all local policemen “those with long guns” to immediately leave the areas around the podium. And to enforce this order, both the SSS men and the Mobile policemen in the Presidential guard moved to expel all local policemen within the entire arena. Eyewitnesses described the behaviour of the Abuja police and security men as surprising as it was disgracing because they physically pushed, kicked and assaulted the local policemen deployed for the campaign.
The figures of the casualties flouted around would have been a kiddies play but for God who helped to avert a clash and exchange of gunfire between the local policemen and the team from Abuja.
All this happened immediately President Jonathan wanted to mount the podium to address the rally. This security aspect was swallowed into the confusion created as people who came solely for their governors were already going out of the stadium after the governors were presented with the party flags. It was this security alert that informed the closing of the main and bigger gate of the stadium leaving the smaller gate which could not take the pressure of the surge by those leaving.
The question is: Who was after the President and the dignitaries at the PDP rally in Port Harcourt? This is actually the big issue to be addressed by the investigation panel. What was the nature of the security alert- bomb scare or suicide or militant attack?
These issues need to be thoroughly addressed because it is now public knowledge that most of our leaders are caged for whatever reasons by overzealous security operatives around them who generate fictitious security alarms just to remain relevant around our rulers and this has to stop.
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.
IFEANYI IZEZE, ABUJA ([email protected])
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content1'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content2'); });