OVER 2,000 lives were allegedly wasted between 2002 and 2004 during the cult crises spareheaded by Ateke Tom and Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo-Asari in Rivers State.
Rivers State governor, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, said this on Tuesday as the Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the state, Mr. Justice Kayode Eso, (JSC), presented copies of the commission’s report to him.
Governor Amaechi, speaking before a crowd of stakeholders of the state, said Dokubo-Asari and Ateke confessed before former President Olusegun Obasanjo at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, that they had killed over 2,000 people in their violent rivalry.
Answering questions on his role in the Odili years in the state, Amaechi said he never kept quiet when he saw the dimension the situation was taking, adding that some even misunderstood him at the time.
He noted that it was the danger he smelled from the trend that spurred him to single-handedly sponsor the Anti-Cultism Bill, adding that if everybody had seen what he saw and moved promptly, the situation would not have gone as bad as it had.
“If you know me, you will also know the difficulties I had in trying to find a solution to the security crisis in this state. You will know that I have said on several occasions that I was in a meeting with Dr. Peter Odili, with Prince Uche Secondus, Ateke Tom, Asari Dokubo, Tonye Harry, I don’t know whether Chief Ake was in that meeting or not, when both Ateke Tom and Asari Dokubo confessed before former President Olusegun Obasanjo, that was the first day of my life to step into the Villa, that they have killed over 2,000 persons.
“I have called names so that you will know that there were witnesses on that occasion. I said that because several people have asked; ‘you were in that government, what did you do?’
“I was part of that government that has so far been written about in this report and I will not deny the government. I held a very important position in that government, I was one of the closest men to Dr. Odili, but anybody who worked in that government will tell you that I complained,” he explained.
In his speech, Justice Eso traced the origin of the crisis that claimed so many lives and spilled so much blood to governance, politics, cultism, chieftaincy and insurgency.
He said the commission successfully reconcilled 15 communities in the state that had hitherto killed and maimed one another, adding that 22 more cases were successfully settled.
He appealed to the state government not to let the work of reconciliation stop with the closure of the commission, noting that this would be a repeat of one of the mistakes of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, after which that of the state was patterned.
Justice Eso also took the time to correct the view that the commission was set up by the state governor to fight political foes, rather, he said it was the brainchild of other stakeholders in the state, an idea entirely different to what the governor had proposed.
Meanwhile, Odili had said that the Justice Kayode Eso Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the Rivers State government was primarily set up to smear his image and that the outcome did not disappoint him.
The former governor, in a statement on his behalf by his Media Advisor, Mr. Emma Okah, said that the outcome did not come to him as a surprise as the commission was set up mainly to smear his image and hard-earned reputation.
He described the commission as a waste of public fund with no intention of finding out the truth or reconciling anybody and the “report of the commission was pre-determined and guided to achieve an ignoble purpose.”
To him, “it is obvious today that while there is no effective reconciliation of many Rivers people, the only truth revealed by Justice Eso’s commission report is that malice and vendetta was the essence of the commission.”
Okah, who quoted Dr. Odili’s statement during the commission’s sitting in Abuja, said that “it was set up to act a script designed to smear my image and hard-earned good name and reputation, discredit my government and the good work I did as a governor.”