Thanks to various recent dramatic developments on the national stage – ex-President Buhari’s death, high-profile politicians defecting from Labour/APC/PDP, febrile coalition talk, etc – my poor, oppressed home state, Rivers, has almost been forgotten. 

We continue to be controlled by retired Vice Admiral Ibok Ete Ibas, an unelected, non-indigenous onetime Chief Of Naval Staff turned military administrator whose conduct, especially around transparency pertaining to financial matters, is far from ideal. 

I continue to bitterly wonder why Rivers legislators in the National Assembly allow this outrage to be inflicted on their kith and kin. 

I get on OK with some of them and am particularly fond of Kingsley Chinda, a genuinely nice House of Representatives member with whom I once served on a state government board. But honestly, Chinda and all of his colleagues are huge disappointments within this context and should, if you ask me, be recalled from Abuja for spectacularly failing to protect their constituents’ interests. 

Rivers State is supposed to be a thriving oil industry hub and regional capital, but it is comatose economically and when I visited Port Harcourt a few days ago, I noticed that morale is very low across the board, whether one is talking to professionals, trad rulers and entrepreneurs or labourers, artisans, taxi drivers and students. 

Almost every Rivers person I have encountered is extremely unhappy about the status quo and puzzled by the President’s decision to impose a state of emergency on us at a time when the only problem on ground was a quarrel between the now suspended civilian governor, Sim Fubara, and his predecessor, Nyesom Wike. 

But these unhappy and puzzled victims of cynical presidential overreach settle for grumbling behind closed doors and are reluctant to confront the authorities with public protests. 

Two days ago on NIGERIA UNFILTERED, one of my YouTube shows, I published the results of an online poll in which I had asked social media users how they felt about Fubara’s decision to make peace with Tinubu and Wike and throw his supporters under a bus. 

Well, 63 per cent said they regarded Fubara as a weakling and traitor; six per cent said they thought Fubara was smart to surrender, while 31 per cent said that they didn’t care about Fubara’s climbdown. 

In other words, even though a significant majority of poll respondents are angry with Fubara and his masters, they are behaving no differently from the 31 per cent who don’t give a damn! 

And, truth be told, most natives of the state deserve the indignities, privations and injustices they are enduring, precisely because most natives of the state are enduring these indignities, etc., silently instead of noisily fighting back and saying “hell no!” 

Truth be told, most Riverians are carrying on like SHEEP rather than people! And I don’t know why so many once proud and once confident individuals are being so bovine while the powers that be are riding roughshod over them and their democratic rights. 

Let me seize this opportunity to thank from the bottom of my heart Senators Dickson (former Bayelsa Governor), Ndume (from Borno) and Ningi (from Bauchi) for standing up for us in the National Assembly at a time when our own senators are pathetically mute. 

Imagine outsiders being more concerned about our plight than the sons and daughter of the soil who are pretending to represent us!

The Federal High 

Court sitting in 

Lagos, yesterday, ordered the Inspector-General of Police, IGP, and the Lagos State Commissioner of Police to jointly pay N10 million in damages for violating the fundamental rights of several peaceful protesters. 

Justice M. Kakaki held that although the police have constitutional powers to enforce laws, those powers must be exercised in accordance with democratic principles and the rule of law. 

Kakaki further held that the applicants, who participated in a peaceful protest on October 20, 2024, during the fourth anniversary of the #EndSARS memorial procession, were unjustly harassed. 

“The applicants were entitled to the constitutional right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, as guaranteed under Section 40 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended),” he ruled. 

The applicants in the suit included several individuals and three organisations—Education Rights Campaign, Take It Back Movement, and Campaign for the Defence of Human Rights. 

I was so pleasantly surprised when I heard about this judgement. 

In an era in which the judiciary is frequently accused of corruption and of sycophantically pandering to the occupants of the corridors of power, it is so very refreshing to witness a Nigerian judge flatly refusing to let blameworthy government officials off the hook! 

More grease to Justice Kakaki’s elbow. May he keep up the good work and continue to be truly courageous, laudably ethical and a credit to a profoundly tarnished legal profession that should be noble but has frequently betrayed those it is supposed to protect and frequently protected those it is supposed to punish.

DONU’S WORLD

I have a YouTube channel. It’s called DONU’S WORLD.

https://youtube.com/@donukogbara?si=bBm_IPdFZ_wUyKYq

NIGERIA UNFILTERED – spicy commentaries on Naija issues – appears every Wednesday, while DONU’S WEEK appears on Fridays and is international as well as local and covers a mish-mash of soft and tough issues around my personal life, my work and my worldview.

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