Obaseki, Iduoriyekemwen et al. and the Revenging Ghost of Inspector Akoh, BY TONY ERHA

The latest public outburst credited to Matthew Aigbuhuneze Iduoriyekemwen, Director General of the 2024 Governorship Campaign Council of the state’s chapter of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), weightily ignites and belies some issues, pertaining the gruesome murder of Onu Akoh, an Inspector of Police and orderly of Senator Monday Okpebholo (a.k.a.) Akpakomiza. In broad daylight, like the style of the Gestapo, he was shot down by yet-to-be-identified gunmen, on the ever-busy precincts of the airport of Benin City, Edo State capital.

Humanity had been shock-ridden and mournful by the cold-blooded shooting of Akoh, at his duty post. with Okpebholo, a sitting Senator of the Federal Government of Nigeria and governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), in the state’s guber election, holding on 21 September, 2024.

Iduoriyekemwen, in the press statement issued on August 18, 2024 accused the police of unlawful arrest and kidnap of chieftains of the state chapter of PDP, by some men from the Intelligence Response Team (IRT), in Abuja.

The statement further alleged that CSP Ibrahim Angbasa and others were deployed by “one DC Sanusi Mohammed of the IRT, Force Headquarters in Abuja, in addition to DC Patrick Ejedawe, from Uromi, Edo Central’, who all had carried out illegal operations of arresting Amos Tom and Kingsley Osahon,

Iduoriyekemwen further accused the state chapter of APC of financial inducement of the said police officers to carry out the arrests and further moves to apprehend Chief Odion Olaye, Chief Francis Inegbiniki Chief B. Olukoga, Mr. Festus Osaigbovo and Dr. Kelly Inedegbor, in order to weaken the strength of the PDP, in the September 21, 2024 governorship election.

But a deep concern is being expressed by perturbed Edo residents and political observers, as to why a governorship electioneering that ought to witness fanfares and conviviality, should spark off such animosity and uproar?

Left for most discerning minds, the aftermath of Akoh’s murder and alleged police arrests, would not have surfaced if, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, the Operator-in-Chief of Edo State and the ruling PDP, had made concerted efforts to bring about a people-oriented government, where peace and unity reign.

A governor who couldn’t manage puzzle of the murder of an innocent police officer, a fellow-human, nor show empathy for a life lost was bound to have more than he bargained for.

When it comes to a murder case, like the dicey one on hand, everyone is a suspect, as it is often said. That duly requires the police to carry out widespread investigation and arrests, without hindrances.

But, when a Matthew Iduoriyekemwen, a trained lawyer (officer of the law in that respect), alleges as he had done in his public blurts, that the police establishment is hateful by arresting and making to apprehend supporters of his PDP party, over the killing of Inspector Akoh, he should approach the police to prove the innocence of his associates, rather than embracing a public spat. .

Iduoriyekemwen’s middle name is ‘Aigbuhuneze’, a Benin nomenclature for “the source of a river can’t be terminated”, a tantamount that ’truth must prevail’ He cannot downplay the constitutional authority of the police to investigate and help to punish criminal conducts and its culprits. However, there is a somewhat denial of the actual meaning of his middle name, when it is correctly or wrongly assumed that his is an effort to thwart the good work of the police, to solve the murder’s puzzle.

It is the same antagonism against institutions and free public enterprise that Governor Obaseki is severally accused of!. Obviously, the PDP’s led government, in its iron-fist rule and false information dissemination, is intolerant with fair criticisms.

Also simply put, Mr. Iduoriyekemwen can’t deny the fact that his today’s PDP can’t be exonerated from the same crude and brigandage politics, the party had nurtured to the present state of the art, in his days as Majority Leader of the state’s House of Assembly.

Few weeks ago, when this writer penned a daunting article, which was lavishly used in the media, the governor had detailed his ‘social media hackers’ to vilify my person. This they did knowing that the faultless article couldn’t be directly challenged by them, before the perceptive public. .

In that article entitled “Governor Obaseki and the Ghost of Inspector Akoh’, I pointed that the governor and his media aides were insensitive to the condemnable murder of Akoh. Amongst other things, I also faulted the governor as having turned Edo’s statecraft into a celebration of vendetta and violence, where his nature for spats is limitless.

Indeed, the public can’t help recalling that the Obaseki’s double-tenure of eight years, as governor, is one mainly characterised by bloody skirmishes and litigations, where the state’s commonwealth is squandered. Before then, I sounded a warning through another write-up entitled “Edo State and Obaseki and Akpata’s Filaga-Filogo’. My deft reading of the governor’s inanity and uncanny nature for reckless public statements and violence, were again confirmed by the killing of Inspector Akoh, only few weeks thereafter.

That there is a nest of hired assassins in Edo, where Obaseki prevails as a governor and chief-security-officer, is not contestable. That the governor’s miens have given rise to unrests in the state is very correct! Alas, the killing of an innocent Akoh, in broad daylight and some other unresolved violent happenings in the state, are evident.

Similar killings would have happened, earlier in Obaseki’s tenure, if not for sheer providence. Sometimes in the past, Senator Matthew Urhoghide, Blessing Agbonmere and Mr. Olumide Akpata, three prominent Edo sons, were lucky, like Okpebholo, not to have been killed by the bullets of assassins, alleged by the governor’s opponents to be on the payroll of Edo government. In the same Benin City airport closed to where Akoh was murdered, Urhoghide was allegedly mobbed through the alleged prompting of the governor, just as Agbonmere, escaped with a broken head and blood stains, at the same spot.

Lately, Mr. Akpata, candidate of Labour Party (LP), in the said September 21, 2024 election, had escaped death by the whiskers, when a group students of the University of Benin, attempted to kill him inside the university auditorium. Akpata and LP had the Obaseki’s led PDP of masterminding the attacks

But, why will Iduoriyekemwen, a one-time state’s representative of the NDDC and a serial governorship aspirant, who had professed to an ability to lead the state, easily submit himself to such statement, in which he provocatively accused the police and its officers? Was that how he would have abort police investigations and arrests if he was elected a governor, who is also chief security officer of the state?

Mr. Iduoriyekemwen (a.k.a Major), should have known that his accusations of the officers of IRT, Abuja and the aforesaid “DC Patrick Ejedawe, from Uromi, Edo Central’” was capable of making them and their dependents soft targets of reprisal bodily attacks.

■ Tony Erha, a journalist a former Crime Editor and Activist of Police Service Reforms of the Civil Liberties Organisations (CLO), writes from Abuja.