Posted by By HENRY CHUKWURAH, CHRIS IKWUNZE Port Harcourt and LUCKY NWANKEWERE, Abuja on
The Joint Military Task Force (JTF) in the Niger Delta, otherwise known as Operation Restore Hope, has arrested the deputy leader of the Niger-Delta People Volunteers Force, Gabriel Asabuja, in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
• As royal father's son is kidnapped
The Joint Military Task Force (JTF) in the Niger Delta, otherwise known as Operation Restore Hope, has arrested the deputy leader of the Niger-Delta People Volunteers Force, Gabriel Asabuja, in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
This is coming on the heels of the kidnap of the son of a traditional ruler in Port Harcourt on Tuesday.
Asabuja was picked up at 2.30a.m. on Sunday by over 50 members of the JTF, who stormed his house at Rukpakwulosi in the Rumuokoro area of Port Harcourt.
The freedom fighter's wife, Gift, who spoke to Daily Sun on Tuesday, described the arrest as a 'commando-like operation."
She said: 'About 50 of them swarmed our house at about 2.30a.m. on Sunday, September 16. Some surrounded the house; others were banging on the door. I was the one that opened the door for them. They demanded for my husband, and he came out from the room. They then bundled him into a waiting military truck. Our house was completely ransacked. It was a bedlam."
Mrs Asabuja said when she requested from the leader of the rampaging team what the matter was, she was told that they were informed that her husband was harbouring some cultists and stockpiling arms.
The distressed wife said that no such cultists or arms were found when their house was searched by the troops who she said took away all the photographs they took while shooting a home video film, including an army cap used for the film.
Mrs. Asabuja described her husband as a man of peace, who had since renounced all forms of violence with Alhaji Dokubo-Asari since 2004. She said she had searched all police stations and the State Security Services (SSS) detention cells but could not find where her husband was being kept.
'My husband has no problem with anybody. In fact, he has been in the forefront calling on the cultists and militants to lay down their arms. The only matter he has commented about, which, maybe, has not gone down well with the authorities, is the community land along the new Air Force Road, which the immediate past Odili administration allocated to his cronies and some military and police top brass with the consent of the communities," Gift further said.
She pleaded with the authorities to release her husband or at least make his whereabouts known to the family so that they could send him food and medication.
In another development, 13-year-old Master Echemadu Eke, son of the traditional ruler of Evo Kingdom and former Deputy Governor of old Rivers State, Eze Frank Eke, was abducted by gunmen on Monday on the outskirts of the capital city.
News of the kidnap of Master Eke broke late Monday night. It was gathered that the gunmen have demanded N50million as ransom from the royal father, a medical surgeon.
The boy, a student of Bereton College, Port Harcourt, was said to have been abducted while returning home from school. The whereabouts of both the boy and his abductors remained unknown as at press time.
Meanwhile, President Yar'Adua has promised to investigate allegations made by leaders of the Ijaw National Forum (INF) concerning the crises in Rivers State.
He told a delegation of the INF leaders, led by Chief Edwin Clark that visited him in the Presidential Villa, Abuja, that he was prepared to go further to establish a judicial commission of inquiry into the crises if the investigations indicated a need to do so.
'You have made very grave allegations. Put the allegations in writing and we will investigate them. I assure you that our interest is for peace and stability in the Niger Delta. We need peace to achieve rapid development of the region. If it is clearly established that anyone is a party to causing the crises, he will be dealt with according to the law. We will act on whatever comes out of a thorough and just investigation," he assured the delegation.
Yar'Adua also assured that he would initiate further dialogue on plans to relocate residents of the waterfront areas of Port Harcourt.
Speaking on the visit to Yar'Adua, Chief Clerk said it was prompted by the Rivers State government's threat to demolish the waterfront in Port Harcourt.
He said the residents of the waterfront, who have been given four months within which to move out of the area, were the original inhabitants of the place since 1912, even before Port Harcourt was founded.
Warning of the consequences of embarking on such a mission, Clark spoke of the need for a presidential intervention to avert the calamities that would eventually erupt in the event of the Rivers State government making good its threat to demolish the place.
'It will be a time bomb. Do you know what is called cultural genocide, ethnic genocide, trying to remove a group of people from where they have been? This is what happened in Sudan; this is what happened in Somalia, in Yugoslavia. This was the cause of first and second world wars," he added.
On his earlier call for emergency rule in Rivers State, the Ijaw leader said that as long as the issue of cultism and its sponsors were not addressed, the desire for peace would be a mirage.
'A situation whereby from 1999 to this day, Rivers State is infested by cults is not good. There are over 103 cult groups in Rivers State. And who are the leaders, financiers and the patrons of these cult groups? They are politicians both in government and outside government," he alleged.
He disagreed with the Rivers State Governor, Mr. Celestine Omehia that he (Clark) did not know what the problem in Rivers was about since he is not an indigene, saying: 'Listen, I am the leader of all Ijaws everywhere they live, even in the Diaspora. When I was fighting for the release of Asari Dokubo, was I a Rivers man? When I was fighting for others, was I a Rivers man?"
On the complaints of the delegation, Minister of Information and Communications, Mr John Odey, said the Yar'Adua administration was concerned about the welfare of the people and would not do anything that would inconvenience anyone.