Several groups in Bayelsa State have continued to oppose the nomination of Senator Heineken Lokpobiri as a ministerial nominee representing the state. In a plea to the National Assembly, one such group, the Bayelsa Solidarity Forum,urged the National Assembly to reject Mr. Lokpobiri.
Several groups in Bayelsa State have continued to oppose the nomination of Senator Heineken Lokpobiri as a ministerial nominee representing the state. In a plea to the National Assembly, one such group, the Bayelsa Solidarity Forum,urged the National Assembly to reject Mr. Lokpobiri, adding that his political antecedents were questionable “both as a former Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Speaker of the Bayelsa State House of Assembly.”
In a petition signed by its secretary, Godspower Belekumo-Davidson, the Forum asked the “leadership of the National Assembly to have a re-think over the nomination and the screening of Lokpobiri. If truly the APC [All Progressives Congress] stands for what it has been professing, the name Lokpobiri shouldn’t have come up in the first instance, let alone sending it to the Senate for ratification.”
In its petition, the group cataloged Mr. Lokpobiri’s alleged offenses against Nigerians and the people of Bayelsa State both as a member of the Bayelsa State Assembly and as a senator.
“For record purposes, Heineken Lokpobiri was elected as a member of the State House of Assembly in 1999 and subsequently became its first speaker but was later impeached in 2002 for gross financial misconduct,” Mr. Belekumo-Davidson wrote. The petition accused the nominee of being behind the bombing of the administrative wing of the State House of Assembly complex, adding that he was “on self-imposed exile in Port Harcourt, Rivers State for many years. This was done in a bid to escape police arrest. The petitioners stated that Mr. Lokpobiri, who in 2011 ran for the Senate on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), lost to the Labor Party (LP) candidate, Perembowei Ebebi. They added that then chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Attahiru Jega, had on national television called for the arrest and prosecution of Senator Lokpobiri who was caught with a ballot box during the election.
According to the petition, Mr. Jega stated that a senator was to be prosecuted by INEC for electoral malpractices, specifically commandeering corps members and election materials to his house.
“When Ebebi appealed to the court, a horde of miscreants sacked the court and destroyed court documents. Matters became worsened. In some amazing abracadabra, whereas the law court wanted Lokpobiri prosecuted, he somehow managed to wriggle himself out of trouble and was declared the eventual winner,” the petition added. In addition, the petitioners alleged that the ministerial nominee hired inebriated thugs to disrupt the PDP’s National Assembly primaries in Sagbama, Bayelsa State on December 7, 2014. They said law enforcement agents thwarted the thugs.
Even so, they added that the nominee had made “reprehensible attempts to suborn the courts to subvert the course of justice and to obtain judgment through the back door. The self-styled ‘Hitler of Ekeremor politics’ is living true to the sobriquet he is so proud of. For him politics is war by some other means and all is fair in war.”
They also alleged that security reports revealed that Mr. Lokpobiri had recruited some thugs and reserved 50 speedboats to unleash violence during the state’s governorship election set for Saturday, December 5, 2015. Stating that they were shocked that a man like Mr. Lokpobiri made the list of President Muhammadu Buhari’s ministerial nominees, the petitioners asserted that the nominee would not be an effective minister from the state.
“We are saying no to the candidacy of Lokpobiri. We have credible people, even in APC, [who] can represent our interest,” the petition stated.