George Onah
28 July 2007
Port Harcourt — For many residents, the capital of Rivers State, hitherto the Garden City where life was lived to the fullest is no longer the place to live in as rivers of blood flow ceaselessly following an unending siege by militants, kidnappers, cultists, and criminals of other hue
Violence in Port Harcourt, Rivers State has gone full circle and the guns are still booming. The casualties are pilling, even as blood of defenceless citizens flow endlessly. Neither the Police nor the government have answers to the brigandage. Security outfits do not have official figures, record or reliable estimates of casualties in the Rivers State orgy of killings.
Even the number of deaths during the Nigerian Civil War had a consensus of informed opinion on the number of deaths, on both sides, which hovered, realistically around 600,000 and below. But the rapidity of casualties in the onslaught by gunmen on Rivers State cannot simply be pigeonholed. The currency of killings is alarming and the growth of the economy of the state is heading for the deep.
The pattern of the crime ranges from kidnapping of expatriates and children of wealthy parentage, to outright violent robbery. Cultism and political vices equally occupy a frightening position on the crime chart. The volatile atmosphere appears to have annulled whatever achievement of the peace and reconciliation committee of the government.
Tragedy stalks merry makers
The most bizarre and complicated of such criminality took place last Monday, July 23. Time was 6.10 pm. The sun was descending in the horizon and was being replaced by a shallow moon. There was a crowd of jolly, merry go-lucky young and old people, clustered around a small house. Music blared from the loudspeakers of car radios, parked along the busy Lumumba/Ojike Streets, in the densely populated Mile I, Diobu area.
By the way, Patrice Lumumba in honour of whom the street was named, assumed leadership in his country in the 1960s, as the first prime minister of post-independent Republic of Congo. He was a politician just like the son of the owner of No 4 Lumumba Street, Port Harcourt. Lumumba died violently and some Hell's Angels planned a similar fate for the newly sworn-in Commissioner for Energy and Natural Resources, Mr. Eldred Billy Braide. The man is counting his blessings now.
Braide and his folks were in party mood, in the family house, over his appointment as commissioner. The house itself, cutting the features of colonialism, is tucked at the intersection of two streets and overlooking the United Evangelical Church, in the opposite direction. With two entrances, punctuated by face-me-I-face-you tenement rooms, the house opens up into a modest courtyard that is lined by bathrooms and conveniences whose doors are made of corrugated roofing sheets.
Gunmen on bikes mount attack
As the party freaks mill in and out of the house, bottles and glasses in hand, a band of five AK-47-clutching young lads rode up and down along the busy street, peeping into the crowd each time they rode past. Then suddenly, Saturday Vanguard gathered that, the five motorcycles rode into the premises and in a flash, the five men, who looked to be in their early 30s secured the place.
"Three of them blocked the busy road, stopping every movement along the street, shooting into the air as they took positions. Two others ransacked the crowd, which gathered at a small drinking place attached to the building, dispossessing them of their phones and money," an eyewitness said. But the unfolding drama totally removed suspicion of robbery as the major reason for the onslaught. It was learnt that shortly after the operation outside, accompanied by rapid burst of gunfire, scores of the party crowd ran into the compound. While the tenants in the house scampered into their rooms, shutting themselves in, the visitors simply wandered about in the yard, searching for space to hide, following which they decided to perch behind drums used in storing water. It was like the ostrich hiding its head in the sand and concluding that it cannot be spotted.
The men and women who used the drums as their shield and thought that they had escaped the gunmen, thought wrong. As the two-some breezed into the compound, they headed straight for the corner where three of the erstwhile merry-makers hid themselves. Standing atop the concrete slabs of a septic tank, the monstrous men pointed the nozzle of their AK-47 riffles at the men, frantically squeezing the triggers and pumping volleys of bullets into them at very close range.
Sitting ducks; mistaken identity
They were defenceless and mere sitting ducks at that instance. When the dust settled, two men, Opali Braide and Obawariboko Iyalla, lay dead. The gunmen casually strolled away, without as much as asking or taking anything away from them. The killers did not search the rooms either, after which they mounted their motorcycles and rolled off towards Uruala Street, also in Diobu. One of the murdered men, Opali, was said to have had a striking resemblance of robust physique with the commissioner. The instant shooting of the man, may have triggered the theory in the city that the men came for the commissioner and not to rob.
Pundits reasoned that the death of Opali was one of mistaken identity. It was suggested also that the robbery was merely a by-product or an indirect consequence of the assassination attempt on the new commissioner's life. Toeing this line of reasoning, the state police commissioner, Mr. Felix Ogbaudu said the rampage at the Braide's was a fallout of political grumbling. But the commissioner, Eldred Braide, in whose honour the crowd of merry-makers had formed, left the scene ten minutes earlier. Saturday Vanguard was informed that Eldred had lost the elder sister, two weeks earlier and had not been buried, following which he frequented the family house in preparation for the interment. So, it was double tragedy for the Braide family of Bakana Community of Kalabari extraction in Degema Local Government of Rivers State.
Although one of the dead is a Braide, sources, however, said he was not a sibling of the commissioner and that "Braide is a compound (village) name in Bakana Town. So, they were relations but not from the same womb or parents".
The commissioner is said to be the last of five children, having lost an elder sister recently. The new government man was described as a "very humble and go-lucky lad who has no time for trouble or harbour animosity against anyone".
Fear reigns in Diobu
In Port Harcourt currently, Diobu particularly, the fear of darkness is the beginning of wisdom. As a result, residents of Diobu area of the city approach the night with trepidation. The streets are deserted as early as 8.00 pm, leaving marauders to ply their trade unchallenged. What is more, the residents of No 4 Lumumba Street are a lot more frightened since the incident. It was gathered that women and children do keep their distance from the house once it is nightfall. In fact, a shop owner in the building where the murderers commenced their operation has not returned to her business many days after the operation, "she is not even in the mood to return now or later," a resident volunteered.
All around the compound is a reminder of the fatal visit of the gunmen. Bullet holes on walls and doors of the bathrooms convey the memory of the experience, which has traumatised the psyche of the tenants and visitors alike. The pair of shoes of one of the dead still lie on the slab of the septic tank, where the men had stumbled in search of a corner to conceal themselves from the rampaging assassins. Beside House No 4 on Lumumba Street, is a Suya spot, manned by a man simply called Aboki. As the evil men roared with their AK-47 guns in the premises, Aboki was said to have abandoned his suya and taken off, clutching only his suya knife as he fled. He too, has joined others in observing the self-imposed curfew.
As the killings continue in the city, the state government has assured that it was fully prepared to combat the upsurge in violence while protecting the lives and property of residents. Reacting to the Braide incident, the government, through the Commissioner for Information, Mr. Emmanuel Okah said, "we condemn the attack in very strong terms. We call on the Police to attack the problems in the manner it deserves. Government will assist the Police and other security agencies to function in their duties". Asked about whom the government thought was responsible for the incident, he said "it is only investigation that can prove those responsible for the attack".
How American, Watts, was attacked
Again the attack on the Braides preceded another robbery, in which an American, Prof. Michael Watts, who came into town only a few days earlier, was ambushed at the door of a local newspaper on 'D' Line area of the city. Watts, who is said to be a researcher on the Niger Delta region, had gone to a commercial bank, hoping to cash some money that was being sent to him.
However, the money did not arrive, so Watts headed for the office, only to be accosted by eight gunmen, who demanded that he surrendered the money "you have just withdrawn from the bank". Apparently, he had been trailed by the men, riding on motorcycles, from the bank situated along Olu Obasanjo Road, not too far from where he was attacked. Sources said the academic told the hoodlums that he did not withdraw any money and that all he had on him was six hundred US dollars, which he promptly gave the rogues.
Not convinced, the men gave him a "last warning to surrender the money from the bank", causing the professor to repeat himself that he did not have more than what he had already given them. Angered by the failed robbery, the men opened fire at the American, injuring him on the hand and critically wounding the security man of the newspaper. The police have no answer to that incident yet, just as Ogbaudu said he was yet to know about the robbery, because "the DPO in the area has not briefed me on it".
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