On October 9, the South-South Zonal Integration Commit­tee of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, one of the peace-promoting bodies inaugurated by the National Working Committee of the party in the six geo-political zones of the country to resolve internal party conflicts, recon­cile and re-build party chap­ters that are fragmented, in preparation for the 2015 gen­eral elections, sat at Legacy House, Abuja to deal with the Rivers State case, after listen­ing to the grievances and com­plaints of party members from Akwa Ibom and Delta States. When it came to the turn of Rivers State, the atmosphere became charged. There was tension in the air. Many people at the venue certainly knew that the Integration Commit­tee needed to be fair and just to all the aggrieved parties, if it must achieve its primary objective: re-unite the party in Rivers State and position it for the general elections of 2015.
This noble intention of the party leadership to address pressing issues in its state chap­ters, and reconcile factions and individuals, were again, as was the case in Port Harcourt, frus­trated by a clique led by an in­creasingly desperate politician whose body language at the venue was properly interpreted by the hoodlums he hired to un­leashing violence on any group that came to Abuja with con­trary positions to those of their pay-master. Whilst the other groups came with position pa­pers and solid arguments, the clique, made up of a serving minister and his hand-picked two-man State PDP Executive, transported to Abuja bus-loads of violent persons who took over security duties at the Legacy House, and decided who would be allowed into the Conference Hall and who should be prevent­ed from entering. Sadly, many members of the other groups were forcefully barred from entering, got injured and were given black eyes in the process. When the protests outside the hall grew louder, the zonal party leaders inside had no choice but to let them in.
It should be mentioned that of the notable elder statesmen present in the hall, two person­alities stood out: Dr Peter Odili, the former governor of Rivers State and Alabo Tonye Graham Douglas, member of PDP Board of Trustees and generally rec­ognised by Rivers people as the founding father of the Party in the state. He worked assiduously with others to receive Odili into PDP from the All Peoples Party, APP, to which he originally be­longed in 1998. Alabo eventual­ly facilitated Odili’s emergence as PDP’s flag bearer in 1999. As is usual with Alabo Douglas, when he was given the floor to speak, he went down memory lane, at times digressing from his message or overstating a few points, but the kernel of his advice remained clear: peace should return to Rivers State chapter of the party in order to preserve and sustain its domi­nance in the politics of the state. He re-stated that the long estab­lished upland/riverine sharing formula must be respected. He then advised that “an Ikwerre person, no matter how much he has spent on the party, should not be allowed to hijack the party or blackmail its leaders into accepting that an Ikwerre should succeed another Ikwerre, back to back. It is not fair. It is not just.”
I was part of the audience, I know what was at stake and I have been living in my state for over two decades. I happened to be visiting a family friend in Abuja at the time of this recon­ciliation meeting. I managed to get into the venue, defying the heavy presence of large-chested men who were obviously thugs. I was eager and looked forward to Odili’s contributions towards the resolution of this very emo­tional conflict that concerns the governorship ambition of our Minister of State, Nyesom Wike, whose ambition is fueling so much division within Rivers State PDP..
To the amazement of many, as I could tell from the faces of several senior Rivers people in the hall, His Excellency, Dr Peter Odili, started by ignor­ing the critical points made by Alabo Graham-Douglas, and began to exhibit such partisan­ship which many considered squarely beneath the standard of a former governor. Hear Odili: “ .you never did anything for my electoral victory, after all I got only five votes from the polling unit in front of your House ..” . It was a pity and disingenuous that Odili avoided the historical fact that Alabo Graham-Doug­las provoked that he almost most singlehandedly facilitated his PDP candidacy in 1999. He carefully trivialised this fact by merely referring to the number of votes cast in front of Alabo’s house. It spoke volumes of Dr. Odili, our governor for eight years. Hear Odili again: “there is no zoning in Rivers State. Af­ter all, Ebenezer Isokrari who is from Kalabari contested with me in 1999”. It was amazing that Peter Odili, with his famed political wisdom, could publicly submit this argument knowing that Ebenezer did not run on PDP platform, but a candidate of the APP.
It was obvious that our former governor had forgotten’ or so it seemed, that Isokrari, who was far more grounded and domi­nant in the political field than he was, refused coming into PDP to slug it out with others at the pri­maries, only because the leader­ship headed by Alabo had zoned the position to Upland area. I could not also believe that Odili did not know that any aspirant could exercise his fundamen­tal right of choice to run, as we witnessed when the late Abuba­kar Rimi ran against Olusegun Obasanjo, even after the PDP had zoned the presidency to the southwest.
.Amawebo writes from Port Harcourt.
To be continued

Odili’s outing at Legacy House (1)