Rivers State Crisis: Patience Jonathan Feigns Ignorance, Calls For Truce

Nigeria First Lady, Dame Patience Faka Jonathan

Feigning ignorance about her role in the political crisis that has engulfed her home state of Rivers State, First Lady Patience Jonathan on Monday asked the warring parties in the state to seek peace. Seeking to strike a populist tone, Mrs. Jonathan stated that the sides in the violent political conflict should embrace peace in the interest of the state’s innocent residents.
Mrs. Jonathan seeming advocacy of reconciliation drew sneers from a human rights activist based in Port Harcourt, the capital of the beleaguered Rivers State. “Who is the First Lady trying to deceive?” she asked, adding: “even the children in the state know that she has a hand in the crisis since she is at loggerheads with Governor Amaechi.”
Many political observers believe that the wife of President Jonathan is the secret instigator and patron of those trying to unseat Mr. Amaechi and to make the state ungovernable. Several sources in the state and Abuja contend that Mrs. Jonathan has set herself the task of dealing with Governor Amaechi because of the governor’s alleged opposition to her husband’s second term bid.
Besides, Mr. Amaechi’s decision to run for the office of chairman of the Nigeria Governors' Forum, against a candidate supported by both Mrs. Jonathan and her husband, irked both the president and his wife.
The Rivers State crisis has also been compounded by Mrs. Jonathan determination to be the sole kingmaker deciding who will succeed Governor Amaechi in Government House.
In a statement issued in Abuja by her special assistant on media, Ayo Osinlu, Mrs. Jonathan noted that impoverished people, including women and children, always bear the consequences of the kind of impasse in Rivers State.
The statement implored political heavyweights in the state not to allow the crisis to be hijacked by miscreants and hoodlums.
Mr. Osinlu’s statement read: “This office wishes to call on all feuding parties in Rivers State to spare a thought for the social, political and economic costs of the crisis, and consider an urgent way to resolve all political differences.
“It is our position that the greater consequences of the impasse is, as usual, reserved for the poor, the weak and the vulnerable, especially women and children, who are usually innocent bystanders in all these.
"This derives naturally from the saying that when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.
“On a larger scale, we subscribe to the fact that conflicts and violence are the most lethal threats to peace, which itself is the irreducible minimum condition for development.
“The situation must therefore not be allowed to degenerate to a level that can be hijacked by miscreants and hoodlums, thus exposing everyone to insecurity from which there may be no easy escape.
“We therefore call on elders of the state to position themselves appropriately in the circumstances, and continue to seek the highest good of Rivers state and its people, by stone-walling the activities of the few who would rather fan little embers into a consuming inferno.
“Recent experience whereby certain otherwise respected elders of the country, both from within and outside Rivers State, were canvassing views that seemed to intensify the heat in Rivers State, is certainly unfortunate.
“We also recall recent pictures of some youths on the streets of Port Harcourt, obviously in an angry mood, a worrisome suggestion that the crisis is already threatening to spill to the streets, a dimension we cannot afford to allow to escalate for obvious reasons.
“We must stress that the people of the state desire and look forward to an end to the hostilities, to pave way for higher economic activities and nobler political engagements that will guarantee an enhancement of their welfare.
“It is therefore incumbent on all people of goodwill to seek to restore peace, brotherliness and love in Rivers State, for the state to press forward in the direction of growth and progress.”