Okafor Ofiebor/Port Harcourt

Albert Horsfall: warns PDP on Rivers State

The former Director-General of the State Security Service,SSS, and the Nigeria Intelligence Agency,NIA, Chief Albert Korubo Horsfall has warned the Peoples Democratic Party about the potential security dangers and economic destabilisation that may befall Rivers State if the party fails to abide by the power rotation principle.

There is a clamour in the state that the governorship seat must move from the mainland area to the Riverine part of the state. Incumbent, Rotimi Amaechi is from the upland and so were his predecessors, Celestine Omehia and Dr.Peter Odili.

It appears the PDP is determined to support the ambition of Nyesom Wike, a former minister, from the upland to succeed Amaechi, leading to the boycott of Saturday’s ward congress by 16 aspirants.

The 73-year-old Horsfall,a chieftain of the PDP told a section of the press in Port Harcourt at the weekend: “I should alert the nation and the Rivers people in particular of the potential security dangers and the socio-economic destabilization that may be about to happen in Rivers State in the face of current political developments.”

He said that the Rivers people are walking into a state of disaster by being docile and by trying not to engage in the realities of the political situation in state.

The former SSS DIrector-General warned: “We are being taken for granted, once again. Rivers people do not accept the imposition of another mainland governorship candidate on the state by one of the main political parties after sixteen years of governance by candidates from the mainland.”

Horsfall who was also the chairman of the Rivers State Social Rehabilitation of former militants, said to avoid a replay of the period of insecurity in the state, all parties should present candidates from the Riverine for the governorship race of the state in 2015.

“Will we forget so soon that between year 2000 and 2002 the seeds of insecurity were deliberately and purposefully sown and sponsored by top political players in the state.”

He recalled that assassins sponsored by these groups and engineered through an unnamed serving police officer at that time murdered a number of persons including Hon. Monday Ndor, a lawmaker in Rivers House of Assembly,etc. and thus drove the state to a downward spiral of insecurity and instability.

He recalled the efforts he made then to arrest the reckless drift to insecurity in the state.

In spite of his little efforts, the state of insecurity persisted and by 2003 assassinations and cult driven gang warfare and gun fights were witnessed all over the state particularly in Port Harcourt, the state capital.

The security expert lamented that at the same time some top politicians had actually sponsored and armed a number of young radicals who soon became warlords.

Horsfall regretted that the weak institutions and leadership in our polity have now promoted some of the warlords into public recognition and status!

Meanwhile the series of unjustified killings and destruction of properties including the destruction of oil and gas installations, attack and kidnap of expatriates, he said.

According to the former SSS boss,the dangerous events continued to happen in Rivers State until 2007,to the extent that in some cases respected chiefs of communities, heads of war canoe houses, were brought to the open, flogged and dehumanized by the so-called war lords. The criminality of the time, he recalled, pervaded the state activities.

” Not only the economic and political lives of Rivers people were affected.Fear and despair descended on most communities when women and even men who went fishing in the creeks were attacked and murdered by renegade gangsters operating outside the control of the main war lords. Economic life came to a standstill. Most ordinary people could not venture outside of their homes to pursue their economic activities. The expatriate communities soon quickly dis-invested and packed out of Rivers State.Thus from 2003 until about the end of 2007 Rivers State was practically dead.”

He wondered if Rivers people would once again allow themselves drift into a similar state of anarchy and helplessness with moves to impose an upland governorship candidate on the state.