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| Ebere Wabara |
Last
week, two major events happened that signposted further that law and
order have given way to the rule of brute force. The first was the
police repression of the protest peacefully staged by Ibadan, Oyo State
residents, who were angered by the seeming collapse of the law
enforcement capacity of the Nigeria Police Force, which enabled the men
of the underworld to run a ritual shrine in a forest not too far away
from the residences of law abiding citizens.
The second incident, which is
even more sinister and points dangerously to the possible role of some
operatives of the law enforcement agencies in the widening spate of
kidnappings for ransom payments across the country, was the forced
abduction by armed Police operatives of Ebere Wabara, a senior editorial
staff of the Daily Sun newspapers, one of the most respected newspapers
in Africa.
Wabara, who is unarguably one
of the best things to have happened to Nigerian journalism given his
prodigious learning and vastness in the English language, was kidnapped
by the armed police operatives, who travelled all the way to Lagos State
from the Abia State Police Command to effect the arrest of this
gentleman of the press over some of his recent articles criticizing the
goings on in his state of birth, Abia.
Few hours after he was
kidnapped from his family home in the presence of his family members,
including very young children, the Abia State Police Command had the
effrontery to announce that he would be charged for sedition, an offence
that is unknown to the Nigerian statutes and the constitution. This
unfounded charge of sedition was a colonial weapon used by the foreign
occupiers of Nigeria long before independence to suppress voices of
opposition to their dictatorial regime. Section 22 of the Nigerian
Constitution gives media workers the fundamental human rights to serve
as watchdogs of public officials without let or hindrance.
First, I got an alert about
this sad incident from one of Nigeria's emerging human rights advocates
and poets, Odimegwu Onwumere, who posted on his Facebook page to tell
Nigerians about this unfortunate event. According to Onwumere, the
veteran media expert, Ebere Wabara, was arrested in the early hours of
March 28, 2014 at his Lagos Residence and taken to Aguda Police Station
before being taken away to Abia State based on the alleged order of
Governor Theodore Ahaefule Orji of Abia State, who was said to have
ordered the Commissioner of Police in the state to effect the arrest. It
was reported that those armed police who effected the abduction of this
senior journalist rebuffed the pleas of the Force Publci Relations
Officer, Frank Mba, to only take his statement and let him be but
decided on their own terms to drive this gentleman to Abia State.
It was learned that it was the
son of the governor, Chinedu Orji, popularly known as and called Ikuku,
who allegedly influenced the father to order for the arrest of Wabara.
The
Abia State Government reacted belatedly to the story making the rounds
that it was involved in the sinister plot to abduct the Lagos
State-based journalist, who in recent times is known to have consulted
for the erstwhile Abia State Governor, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, as media
adviser and who has written profusely to criticize the misrule going on
in Abia State.
It is public knowledge that
the Abia State governor and his erstwhile godfather, Orji Uzor Kalu, are
no longer best of friends following political differences. The Abia
State Government has spent huge public funds in hiring writers who have
in the last two years written several articles published in some
Nigerian media to lampoon the former Abia State governor.
Orji is known to have gathered
some political jobbers from his state who headed to the national
secretariat of the Peoples Democratic Party in Abuja to oppose the
decision of Kalu to return to the political party he actively helped to
become realistic through numerous huge financial donations. In the first
instance, Orji Uzor Kalu, one of the original founders of PDP, was
literary chased out of the party by former President Olusegun Obasanjo,
who engaged the former governor in serious political warfare.
Kalu staged a come back to his
party on finding out that Obasanjo has lost out significantly in the
control of the party's hierarchy but little did he know that his
political enemies are his own brothers and sisters from the same state.
Right thinking members of the
public are therefore shocked to find out that the Abia State Police
Command has decided to become partisan in the ongoing political fight
between a former godfather (Orji Uzor Kalu) and his former god son
(Theodore Orji). Though Nigerians have been accused of having short
memory, but it is hard to forget that Orji Uzor Kalu singlehandedly
handpicked his then Chief of Staff, Theodore Orji, and installed him as
governor even when the current governor was incarcerated in the maximum
security prison in Kirikiri, Lagos State. Orji Uzor Kalu's then Abia
State administration used the legal instrument to secure his (Theodore
Orji's) bail from gulag, which facilitated his being sworn in and
clothed with the immunity from arrest and prosecution in accordance with
Section 308 of the constitution.
It is heart warming that the
Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, intervened and ordered
the release from police captivity of Wabara, who was kidnapped by the
police over his professional affinity with the former governor of Abia
State.
Confirming the story to media
specialist, Onwumere, the wife of the kidnapped journalist, Mrs. Wabara,
said: “In the early hours of today (last Friday), I was about to drive
my children to school. My husband came down from the upstairs to view
how we were preparing unknowing to him that there was a siege. The
supposedly police people arrested him and took him to Aguda police
station, before informing that they were taking him to Abia State on the
orders of the Governor.”
The woman added: “I am not
sure when a right to opinion, which my kind-hearted husband was doing,
becomes a crime in Nigeria. I presupposed that this is a democracy, but
with the supposedly act of the governor; I am afraid that dictatorship
has returned to Abia State. “I’m calling on all media practitioners to
follow-up immediately to find out, where they have taken my good-natured
husband to and, make sure that he is released unconditionally. I’m
calling on the authorities in the country and away, to swoop into action
and fight against this inhumane act that is being meted out to my
husband, as injustice to one Nigerian, is injustice to all."
It is gratifying that the
Nigerian Union of Journalists and the Nigerian Guild of Editors raised
the alarm, which compelled Abubakar to do the needful by ordering the
immediate release of Wabara. But beyond the release, there is the
immediate need for the Federal Povernment to probe the possible linkage
of the operatives of the Nigeria Police Force to the widespread cases of
forced kidnappings that have been happening all across Nigeria because
since the Nigeria police practices illegal hostage taking and now forced
abduction of Nigerian citizens in broad daylight, it is not impossible
that some of their operatives may be aiding and abetting kidnappers.
. Emmanuel Onwubiko; Head of Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, blogs @www.huriwa.blogspot.com http://www.huriwa.org/
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