Foremost Ijaw leader, Chief Edwin Clark has criticised the Federal Government over its planned secret trial of the leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, Mr. Henry Okah
Okah and another MEND�s leader, Edward Atatah, have been arraigned at a Federal High Court in Jos, on a 47 � count charge of treason and conspiracy.
But Clark, who spoke to journalists on Saturday, during the installation of Alabo Tonye Graham Douglass as the sixth Orubibi of Abonnema, said Ijaws would challenge the action.
Graham-Douglass was officially presented and installed to occupy the ancient stool of Orubibi War Canoe Group of Houses by kingmakers in Abonnema, Rivers State .
He said that the Federal Government would be challenged by at the Court of Appeal and in the Supreme Court if it went ahead to try the militant leaders secretly.
The visibly angry elder-statesman argued that there was no basis to try Okah and his colleague in secret when the government had openly accused them of committing crimes.
He said, �We will appeal to the Court of Appeal and to the Supreme Court. It is never done. Mustapha is free now. But was Mustapha not accused by Obasanjo of trying to overthrow him and trying to kill him with missiles?
�He was tried in the opened court and he was freed yesterday. What has Okah done? The federal government went to South Africa to negotiate with him. Did he commit this offence before they went to negotiate with him or was it after?
�And if Okah wanted to overthrow any foreign government, is it secret trial that will prove it? Let the government of these countries know that Okah is being tried on their behalf.�
On the ongoing probe in the power sector, the former federal commissioner said Nigerians appreciated the efforts so far made by the House of Representatives on the matter.
He described members of the House Committee on Power and Steel, as one of the bravest groups of young Nigerians, but admitted that they did not have the powers to punish those found culpable.
�If that $19bn had been used in developing the Niger Delta, we could have been in heaven today. I was one of those speaking against him. We have been talking and we are still talking that he planted Odili here for eight years to destroy the people. Nothing went to the Rivers people.