The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has urged Nigerians to hold President Goodluck Jonathan responsible if the country slides into anarchy as a result of the worsening crisis in Rivers State.
Reacting to the attack on the four governors who visited Governor Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers in Port Harcourt on Tuesday, the party said in a statement issued on Wednesday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in Oro, Kwara State that the attack that took place under President Jonathan’s watch is unprecedented in the country’s history.
“We will not accept the usual sophistry that President Jonathan is not in any way involved in the Rivers crisis,” ACN stated.
“It is also not an excuse to argue that the president did not know that the visiting governors will be attacked, because as the country’s Chief Security Officer, he has his ears and eyes all over the country in the persons of security agents. Therefore, if the argument is that he did not know of the attack, then he is not on top of his game.”
ACN wondered when it became a sin for any Nigerian, including elected officials, to visit any part of the country as the governors did, saying there can be no justification other than organised political rascality for a group of paid hoodlums to invade a secure environment like the airport and pelt the convoy bearing the governors with all sorts of objects.
The party wondered why the Police could not provide adequate security for the visiting state chief executives and restrain ‘the hired scallywags’ from their audacious action.
“Would the Police have allowed tramps to attack the governors if they were visiting the president? Would the Police in Rivers have allowed vagrants to act freely if those visiting Port Harcourt had come in solidarity with the five renegade members of the State House of Assembly?
“The unprofessional behaviour of the Police in Rivers is the reason Nigerians have accused the state police command of bias and called for the redeployment of its ‘political’ commissioner, Mbu Joseph Mbu.
“The visiting governors were right to have visited their Rivers counterpart in the face of the siege on him by renegades being teleguided from higher quarters. They are right to have expressed solidarity with Gov. Amaechi, the Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum. We salute the governors as true patriots and the real sustainers of our constitution, and we demand appropriate sanctions for those whose dereliction of duty put the governors’ lives in danger.”
ACN repeated its earlier warning against any contrived crisis in any part of the country as a way of pushing the country into a perpetual state of chaos, thus ensuring there will be no elections in 2015.
“The politics of 2015 cannot be removed from what is happening in Rivers. We have had cause to warn Nigerians to be vigilant against those who will foment trouble where there is none, just to put in abeyance the 2015 elections, especially where the emerging signals point to the fact that they will be rejected by voters.
“Those who are afraid of free and fair elections in 2015 will do anything to prevent one. Therefore, we are repeating our call on all Nigerians to be vigilant, because eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”