Arrest me and Nigeria will be history, Dokubo-Asari dares Reps

Niger Delta frontline activist and leader of the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force (NDPVF), Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, has dared the House of Representatives and leaders in northern Nigeria to arrest him if they can, adding that if they do, Nigeria will become history.

Dokubo-Asari, who addressed a press conference in Abuja, stressed that he stands by his words that “there will be no peace if Jonathan is not re-elected in 2015.”

The House of Representatives had, after a motion moved by Honourable Ali Madaki, called on the Inspector General of Police,  Mohammed Abubakar, to arrest Dokubo-Asari for saying that there would be no peace in Nigeria if President Jonathan was not returned for a second term in 2015.

The position of the House was supported by the Niger State governor, Alhaji Babangida Aliyu, who also called for his arrest.

Other northern leaders and organisations, including the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), also called for Dokubo-Asari’s arrest.

Responding to the various calls for his arrest, the activist said they were cowards if they failed to arrest him.

The former president of Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) also stated that any attempt to arrest him would make Nigeria a history.

He queried why those calling for his arrest turned deaf ears when some northern leaders, like former head of state and 2011 presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), General Mohammadu Buhari; Alhaji Lawal Kaita and a former member of the House of Representatives, Adamu Farouk Aliyu, among others, threatened to make Nigeria ungovernable if a northerner failed to emerge as president in 2015.

According to him, “I stand by my statement which I made in my earlier press conference. There will be no peace, not only in the Niger Delta, but everywhere, if Jonathan is not president by 2015, and I want to add that the Fulanis, who migrated and invaded our lands and continue to show disregard and disrespect to the owners of the country they came into, and people have tolerated them for a very long time, but that will no longer continue.”

Dokubo-Asari said a follow-up to Kaita’s statement that “Nigeria would be ungovernable if Jonathan was returned in 2015 was the insurgent groups from the feudal Fulani occupiers of the land, who are wreaking havoc, attacking military barracks and seizing weapons, while their foot-soldiers in the army are planning a coup, but we will not sit and watch.

“For every action from them, there will be an equal and opposite reaction and it will be disproportionate. Kaita made this statement, nobody arrested or call for the arrest of this fellow,  today he is walking free.”

Dokubo-Asari also carpeted Buhari for his inciting statement against Jonathan, adding that “Buhari made this statement in 2012, he was never arrested and nobody ever called for his arrest. In other countries, former leaders are being tried, but here, a man who overthrew a legitimate government continues to threaten us with blood and nothing has happened. Who is this criminal, who took our guns, our resources, to plan and overthrow a legitimate government and introduce retroactive laws that led to the death of innocent citizens, and nothing has happened.”

He also carpeted Aliyu,  saying “I am happy he remarked that nobody has the monopoly of violence, and I want to tell him that we have not had maitasine or Boko Haram in the south, we have not had Shahid revote in the south, we thank God that they don’t have monopoly of violence because we are going to give them surplus of violence.”

Responding particularly to Aliyu’s claims that the Ijaw people of the oil-rich Niger Delta did not have the population to match the North, Asari said “this Fulani invader is talking about population. We all know that they don’t have the number they claim to have and we know that we are more populated than they, and no figure they bring will be accepted by us.”

He added that “I am not afraid of arrest. I’ve been arrested before. I was put under SSS underground 10 months and 11 days. I was buried alive and I came out alive. I was detained for 22 months and 10 days, I didn’t give up the fight. I didn’t capitulate. So, I am not afraid of arrest and they cannot arrest me because if they do, the consequences of my arrest is that Nigeria will be history.

“The last time (Olusegun)Obasanjo arrested me, my arrest reduced Nigeria’s oil production to 700,000 barrels per day. This time, it will reduce to zero barrel, and we will match violence by violence, intrigues by intrigues, we are ready for them.

“Jonathan will complete his tenure of two terms whether they like it or not. For us, they don’t even exist because we pay them, and he who pays the piper dictates the tune. We pay them, we feed them, they are parasites, they are a burden on us, and these invaders must be expelled from our lands, they have no reason to be with us.”

Nigeria’ll not break if... —Edwin Clark
Ijaw leader and former Minister of Information, Chief Edwin Clark, has said come what may, hell would not let loose if Jonathan loses presidential election in 2015.

This is just as he petitioned the House of Representatives to investigate all inflammatory and provocative utterances made so far by Nigerians, especially northerners, instead of selectively hunting the duo of Mr Kinsgley Kuku and Dokubo-Asari for arrest by the Inspector General of Police.

The octogenarian, who granted a press conference at his country home in Warri, on Thursday afternoon, also asked President Jonathan to convoke a national conference of all ethnic nationalities, to determine the status of the country before the 2014 centenary celebration, without which the country may be heading for the parlous precipice.

The Ijaw leader said he was sure that Jonathan would accept whatever decision he got from the electorate in 2015, saying he would be the last person to cause chaos and anarchy for his successor if he lose.

Over 600 ex-militants threaten to invade NASS over Dokubo-Asari, Kuku
Over 600 ex-militants, on Thursday, threatened to storm the floor of the  House of Representatives over the summon on  Kuku and Dokubo-Asari, over alleged inflammatory statements on the 2015 presidential poll.

In separate statements issued in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, by the Coalition of Ex-Militants, under the aegis of the Leadership of the Peace and Cultural Development Initiative (LPCDI), and former member of the Senate Chamber of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), Eris Paul, known along the creeks as Commander Ogunboss, insisted that the decision of the ex-militant was based on the perceived ethnic and parochial intent behind the summon by the House of Representatives.

While the LPCDI, through the statement signed by its president, Pastor Reuben Wilson, described the House of Representatives summon as “divisive” and “attempt to ignite the ethnic keg of gun powder in the country,” Commander Ogunboss described the summon as a show of undemocratic tendencies on the part of a serving governor, “who thinks he is protecting the unity of an already disorganised society by some northern cabals.”

In the statement of the LPCDI, Pastor Wilson said the posture of the House of Representatives was a show of bias and double standard in the monitoring of alleged volatile posture of the political class ahead of the 2015 poll.

“We observed that irrespective of the decision made by the representatives, they should be aware that the failure to arrest the likes of Buhari over his comment in the national daily on May 15, 2012; the national coordinator of the Coalition of Northern Politicians, Academics, Professionals and Businessmen, Dr Junaidu Mohammed, in another national daily of March 17, 2013, and Abu King Shuluwa on March 8, 2013.”

Paul accused the Niger State governor of bias and wickedness.”
“If Aliyu thinks he was sincere enough to protect the nation from an impending doom, let him call on the security agencies to begin their investigations with Buhari who, in recent times, has been crying foul over threats of bloodshed and revolt on the nations unity, as witnessed in Egypt andTunisia.

“We all know in this country that just minutes after Buhari’s presidential loss to Jonathern in 2011, riots broked out, where houses of the president’s loyalists were burnt in parts of the North, properties destroyed and lives lost, which we can attribute to present bombings of Boko Haram experienced till date.

“And if Dokubo-Asari’s statement is capable of creating disunity and disaffection on the nation’s unity, as Governor Aliyu and his counterparts in the House Representatives have stated, what will Buhari’s utterances be capable of?”