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Statement
Of H.M Edidem Bassey Ekpo Bassey II
On The Coronation Of A Rival Candidate In Calabar
The Government of the Cross River State, since 1999,
must take vicarious responsibility for the destruction
of Nigeria's democratic institutions everywhere; and
also for the culture of violence that is becoming
endemic.
So much of the fraud and dishonesty, the extreme
brutality with which public affairs are conducted in
most states of Nigeria today, were learnt from the Cross
River State. Col. Tony Nyam, an indigene of the state
who in 2003 was on Chief Obasanjo's campaign team,
recently told the National LIFE newspaper that he went
home to help the campaign, only to find that there was
no election at all in the State. Yet the electoral
commission had registered 1.2million phantom voters in
the state, and when the results were out, Obasanjo had
“polled” 1.2million, and the governorship candidate,
1.1million. There was no other state with such ruthless
efficiency in the game of fraud.
It is also from the Cross River State that certain state
governors have learnt to recruit their police commands
into turning their guns on the people, working with
Janjaweed kind of thugs to effect unlawful purposes.
Investigations may well show that that was why the
latest Jos riots claimed so many lives. Police guns
turned on the people! The only outstanding lesson
Nigeria has to lesson from Cross River is how to render
the law courts absolutely ineffective, and to hold the
judges in crippling fear.
On the 6th of April 2008, I was capped as Obong of
Calabar at our ancient kingship shrine, according to
tradition and according to law. In spite of the fact
that the laws of the Cross River State give no
interventionist powers to Government, the State
administration rallied the full force of the
Mobile/Regular police and sundry private hit squads
working with Government, some of them active in the
Niger Delta, and purported to have capped a rival
candidate, one month after. Before they had the chance
of carrying out that fatal sacrilege, we took both the
government and the minority group of kingmakers working
with them to court; yet the Cross River State Government
proceeded, not only to unlawfully cap the fellow, but
also to accord him recognition. My lawyer friends tell
me, that when a matter comes before the court both
parties are required to freeze the status quo, and not
engage in self-help. This rule applies everywhere,
except in the Cross River State.
Accordingly, we have filed a motion at the Calabar High
Court, requesting a reversal to status quo; ante both
the so- called second capping and the illegal
recognition. Meanwhile, we prayed the court to restrain
the other party (government and the minority group of
kingmakers) from carrying out the coronation they are
planning for their protégée. The court, presided over by
Justice Bassey Ikpeme, declined, and we lodged an appeal
at the Court of Appeal. The government protégée, Ekpo
Okon Abasi Otu, deposed on oath, at the Court of Appeal
that he had “not made any arrangement to be coronated at
the Duke Town Presbyterian Church, Calabar …………. “ and
that he is “not aware of any plans to coronate (him)
during the pending (sic) of this suit ……….” (Affidavit
sworn to in the Court of Appeal of Nigeria, holden at
Calabar, pursuant to suit no. CA/C/114M/2008, 6th
October,2008).
He also swore in the affidavit that he had not acted in
any way to undermine the integrity or authority of the
Court.
“That I have not done any act prejudicial to the
determination of this suit, nor had I connivance (sic)
with the 2nd respondent to break into Efe Asabo with
armed policemen for the purpose of capping me”.
On the strength of that assurance, the matter was
adjourned to mid-January 2009, yet both the government
and Abasi-Otu's group proceeded with arrangements for
coronation on 13th December, 2008! This of course is to
hand the court a fait- accompli in January, because they
boast that no court sitting in Calabar will lift a
finger against the Cross River State Government! It is
true that judicial officers living and working in
Calabar, have a certain trepidation about the State
administration, with its murderous disposition.
In 2001, the administration did not have its way with
Chief Magistrate Maria-Theresa Nsa, and so she was
slaughtered like a ram at her residence by one of the
Janjaweed type groups developed by Government, with the
help of the police. The police arrested and put on
trial, the dead woman's only child, and by the time he
was discharged and acquitted, he had lost his place in
the University, and had been in prison for six years!
Meanwhile, in a letter to the Commissioner of Police,
dated 14th December 2002, the hit squad that carried out
the slaughter wrote that they did it on the instruction
of government (passed to them in writing by a member of
the House of Representatives).
The letter also detailed other assignments the group had
carried out for the State Government, including burning
down the hotel of Ambassador Obi-Odu, then serving in
South Korea as Nigeria's representative (and sundry
assassinations). He was rumoured to be nursing
governorship ambition, and in the Cross River State,
that could be a capital offence. The police predictably
showed no interest in this confession as they continued
with the prosecution of the late Chief Magistrate's son!
It does appear however, that judicial officers, or at
least quite a number of them, have got the message. They
are not allowed to proceed or find against the
Government of the State.
When we filed our matter, asking the State High Court to
examine the facts of our selection and capping, as well
as the ad baculum response of government, and say who is
the Obong of Calabar, judge after judge declined to hear
the case; and we concluded that it was in sensible
regard for their safety. Four judges returned the case
to the Chief Judge (we had raised objections to only one
of them). The one hearing the case now, Justice Bassey
Ikpeme, had similarly declined, but was compelled by the
Chief Judge to hear it.
He refused to grant a routine injunction against
government and its client group of kingmakers, and we
took the matter to the Court of Appeal. Here they swore
to an affidavit that they were not planning coronation;
and when the matter was adjourned to January, proceeded
to organize coronation for December, and announce it on
State radio!
In the extremely repressive circumstance of the Cross
River State, the predilections of government are the
law. The courts are nothing before an administration
that controls the Mobile police and has Janjaweed or
Isakaba at its beck and call. There are no citizenship
rights, and the right to aspire exists only for persons
who are members of the ruling gang or those who tremble
in their presence.
On August 25th 2008, they unleashed a massive force of
Mobile/ Regular Police and Isakaba thugs on my
residence, to slaughter me. They operated for three
hours but could not find me. They tore down everything
in their sight including wood work that is almost a
century old; looted the place in terms of cash, jewelry,
computer, telephones, loads of files etc. My wife and
her bakery staff were brutalized and abducted, so were
Etubom Dr. Akpanika who had brought police to arrest the
first wave of attack carried out almost exclusively by
Isakaba thugs, and an American researcher, Dr. Ivor
Miller who was guest of my palace. Miller's shirt was
torn, his video camera smashed and his person thoroughly
beaten up and dumped in an open van together with my
wife, her staff, Dr. Akpanika, my personal driver and a
night watch man.
The security man and driver are still languishing in
prison custody for committing no offence known to
Nigerian Law. The beating they received was so severe
that the security man is probably maimed for life and
the driver has undergone surgery! Police Commissioner
Emmanuel Ezeozue who unleashed this combined force of
the police and terror gang on my residence explains that
they had come to my neighbourhood to arrest a murder
suspect, whom they claim to have arrested at a kiosk
opposite my residence. If that is so, what were they
doing at my gate and in my residence?
The truth is that the Commissioner of Police as at the
time of my capping, Mr. Innocent Ilozuoke, and the
Deputy Governor, Mr. Effiok Cobham concocted a murder
story with which to put away all the guards at the
shrine and every young person associated with me. They
claimed that the Vice Chairman of their Isakaba gang had
been killed. My information is that up till today there
is no proof of any such death or what might have killed
him.
Government uses Isakaba in sundry battles. Three ancient
towns, Ebijakara, Obom Itiat and Ikot Ana have been
razed to the ground. If he is actually dead, the fellow
could have fallen in any of those battles, or in their
ceaseless bunkering of petroleum products (under police
protection) at the NNPC depot in Calabar or their
dangerous sea trade in the product. The so called dead
man's daughter was made to write a statement to the
effect that she woke up in the night to see ten people
killing her father. In a part of town where there is
never light she saw and counted ten people, could
identify them (has since given a list to the police) and
had the presence of mind to re-enter the house, dress up
and go to the police station to report the murder. And
the assailants let her!
She claimed to have seen ten persons; meanwhile there
are at least sixteen persons in prison custody, almost
all with machete cuts inflicted on them by Isakaba, with
the police in attendance. Some were abducted and have
simply disappeared. Meanwhile, I am informed that Mr.
Ezeozue has reworked the evidence to rope me in; that I
sent the boys to go and kill the man. It does of course
not matter that I never knew the person let alone have a
quarrel with him. In 2000, Gov Donald Duke did the same
thing to me and got away with it, arrested and tried me
for the murder of a person I had never heard of. His
successor is encouraged to employ the same method of
work since his assassin -in- chief, Mr. Ezeozue, the
Police Commissioner has not killed me thus far.
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