Troubling signals from Taraba, Ekiti

When the ailing Governor of Taraba State, Danbaba Suntai, returned from his elongated medical vacation abroad and could not be allowed to resume due to his subsisting indisposition, the state fell into the shadow of deadly power play.

It not only concerns the power equation of the present between the Governor and his Deputy, it also has a lot to do with who gets what during the impending 2015 general elections.

Just a few weeks before he slumped and died, the former Speaker of the Taraba State House of Assembly, Haruna Tsokwa, had narrowly escaped assassination. The latest was another assassination attempt on the Deputy Speaker, Adamu Maikarfi, who was lucky not to be at home when his assailants came calling.

The case in Ekiti State got even deadlier. On November 3rd 2013, assailants gunned down one Mr Foluso Ogundare, a loyalist of Hon Opeyemi Bamidele, who is stridently determined to challenge the Governor of the state, Dr Kayode Fayemi, for the governorship seat during next year’s election in the state. Another loyalist, Mrs Beatrice Ige, was shot in the buttocks during the encounter.

Bearing in mind that a similar bloodletting foreshadowed the governorship election in Edo State, where Comrade Olaitan Oyerinde, the Principal Private Secretary to Governor Adams Oshiomhole was shot dead; a murder that rattled the state and the entire Police institution, we hasten to call for caution on all stakeholders to immediately halt the ugly trend.

We condemn without equivocation, this resort to barbarism by political actors. Rather than put in efforts to convince the electorate, the ultimate source of power, as to why they should be voted for, politicians have formed the habit of hiring gunmen to eliminate their opponents in the run-up to elections. This blood-soaked democracy has continued unabated because the law enforcement agencies, especially the Police, have failed to assert themselves by enforcing the laws and bringing the perpetrators of murders to book in order to discourage future occurrence.

Fourteen years after the return of civilian rule, we should be putting our ugly history of political murders behind us. We are all victims to the Frankenstein monsters politicians create by arming people to get to political office by all means possible only for the gunmen to turn around and become kidnappers, robbers, militants and insurgents, thus making society unsafe for all.

We call on the federal government to mobilise the law enforcement agents to maximum alertness in flashpoint states where elections are to be held within the next one year and ensure the safety of law abiding major political actors. These include Anambra, Ekiti, Nasarawa and Taraba States.

Unless we begin to apprehend political killers, the trend will only continue to blossom and our democracy may not survive for much longer.