By Kayode Sanni-Arewa
The Acting Amananaowei (King) of Igbomotoru 1 Community in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, His Royal Highness Goodluck Alagodei has raised the alarm over alleged attacks, torture and arrest of returning indigenes and residents alike who fled the community following military invasion over the killings of Army 17 in Okuama, Delta State.
The distraught monarch called on Governor Douye Diri to intervene urgently to avoid the matter snowballing into another major crisis in his domain.
He accused a dethroned former monarch and some operatives of anti-oil theft security company of working in concert with some military operatives stationed in the community to carry out the atrocity.
Alagodei said: “I make this distress call to Governor Douye Diri following attacks on innocent people who have been displaced and returning home from hideouts since the military invasion of Igbomotoru community on 17th March, 2024 relying on the Governor’s call to return home.
“The former King is working hand in glove with operatives of security surveillance company to thwart the good intentions of Governor Diri to ensure peace in Igbomotoru as demonstrated in his recent visit to the community.
“The perpetrators are currently ransacking the community, dragging out people, flogging them and arresting innocent people on trumped up charges. Thereafter, they hand them over to soldiers for torture. The situation has heightened tension in the community.”
He appealed to Diri to intervene and douse the rising tension from further escalating to loss of innocent lives due to the vendetta driven attacks on innocent people by the perpetrators who had concluded plans to dethrone chiefs in the community and install their ‘own’ to run the affairs of the community.
He thanked the Governor for donating relief materials to the communities which he stated would bring succour to the people and pledged their unalloyed loyalty and support to the renewed prosperity administration.
King Alagodei further called on the high command of the military to charge their personnel to keep within permissible framework while carrying out their search for suspected perpetrators of Okuama killings.
King Alagodei emphasised that the dethroned monarch had lost touch with reality and did not know the situation of things in the community, adding that he is still reeling from his rejection by the people and is intentionally fabricating unfounded stories to implicate an ex-militant leader Endurance Amagbein into the Okuama killings.
The monarch described Amagbein as a man of proven integrity, with peaceful disposition, touching the lives of people through his philanthropic gestures of payment of school fees, provision of educational materials to schools, various employment programmes for the youths, support for the elderly, provision of 500 KVA generators and diesel among other life transforming programmes that have endeared him to the people.
The Acting Amananaowei noted that Amagbein worked assiduously to stop pipeline vandalism and sea piracy in Igbomotoru axis and wondered what the dethroned monarch intended to achieve by employing deliberate falsehood to cast aspersions on the ex-agitator.
He advised the general public to discountenance the press conference held by the former king, describing his statement that soldiers mobilised to Igbomotoru in pursuit of Amagbein as false, baseless, misleading and a deliberate attempt to portray the ex-militant leader as being responsible for the gruesome murder of the soldiers in Okuama. (The Nation: Text, Excluding Headline)