By Azubuike Ihemeje
Some of the imponderable things that have held us as a people hostage are: A lack of ability to discern the sincerity from hypocrisy and Inability to distinguish between honesty and dishonesty.
But the baba of them all is Tribalism!
Tribalism shields a multitude of other iniquities.
How else can one describe some of our so-called human “rice” people who parade as altruistic human rights groups, but deep down are simply enriching their pockets and filling their stomachs?
I lack words to describe those who hijack every situation as an opportunity to emotionally blackmail unsuspecting individuals, just for their personal mischievous objectives.
Now, how else do you situate some people who claim the Governor is not ‘carrying them along’ and that is why they insisted on having the government to speak on a clearly judicial process; even when the appropriate governmental department (DPP) has already released their legal advice and exonerated all the people you claimed to be fighting for.
They play the tribalism card as blackmail, by claiming that things are not being handled properly (by their own standards) because the victims are not from Rivers State.
They seem to have completely forgotten that both the victims and their direct victimizers are of the same stock.
Interventions came to victims/bereaved from well-spirited individuals and religious leaders who unpublicly remonstrated that nobody cares about them.
But these trouble-mongers yearn and desperately desire for some of the spoils of their ‘agitation’. They want everything monetized.
Then they started lurking around, this time, against the person of the incorruptible Commissioner of Police of Rivers State.
They want him redeployed out of Rivers State.
They’ve suddenly forgotten all the phenomenal security achievements we’ve witnessed and are still enjoying under the watch of CP DanDaura.
Our human “rice” people are not even pretending as to their own hypocrisy.
They’ve seen, heard and perfectly understood that the CP has never shielded any of his officers already implicated in the crime. They’re fully aware that those directly involved must face the full wrath of the law.
They know the CP has absolutely nothing to gain materially or otherwise if justice is denied in this case.
They are not oblivious to these truths. But they must do some blackmail just because sometimes, it pays.
Some very ridiculous ones among them resonated with our common albatross; Tribalism.
They claimed CP prevented them from protests, protests they knew would fan the amber of ethnicity and tribalism, in an already tensed environment.
They easily forgot that recently, Mr Abbey, an Assistant Commissioner of Police from Bonny LGA of Rivers State was gruesomely murdered in Anambra.
But they disingenuously forgot how this particular CP managed what could lead to serious security issues in Bonny, as some aggrieved members of Bonny communities vowed to attack all Igbo people on that island.
It is this same CP’s timely interventions that helped to prevent what would’ve led to a genocide of some sort.
Yet, blinded by hypocrisy, dishonesty and tribalism, our very human “rice” people won’t even ponder and reflect before they speak.
But the dangerous irony in this game of hypocrisy, dishonesty and tribalism is that; the more you play it and point one finger at someone else, the rest four fingers are directly pointing at you.
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