Written by Mr. Sogbeye Eli
That Hon. Henry Itonenaan Ogiri capitulated politically since last week is no longer news. What made him hug the blog headlines and his name gain traction in the Rivers cyberspace was the story of the arrival of the Minister of Transportation, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, in Port Harcourt  on a private visit and the cameras capturing Ogiri’s image walking side-by-side with him.
And boy, the outrage has been bi-partisan! It has drawn the ire of even non-political actors!
So much drain water has been splashed on the two-term member of the Rivers State House of Assembly (2003-2011); immediate past Executive Director, Finance & Accounts at the NDDC; Chartered Accountant and Doctor of Philosophy in a Finance-related discipline of the prestigious University of Leeds in the UK.
This is most unfortunate. Why? The story is being magnified out of proportion. Ogiri’s return to Amaechi’s stable is more of a return to his original political family than to the APC for some political amnesty.
Next to Hon. Augustine Paul Ngo, Ogiri shares the privilege of working with Rotimi Amaechi as House Speaker and Governor of Rivers State from the Abua/Odual LGA axis. Meaning, Ogiri qualified in every material particular as an Amaechi man. The binding thread snapped only when political expediency set in. A choice must be made between politics and blood ties and it was not too difficult for Ogiri to be persuaded by the ancestral ties between the Odual and President Goodluck Jonathan’s Ogbia people.
And so the war called politics raged, taking captive of old friendships until 2015 claimed Jonathan’s presidency. But what Ogiri lost in Jonathan’s ouster in Aso Rock, he gained in Nyesom Wike’s entrance in Government House, Port Harcourt. The machinery to oil the romance with Jonathan and the PDP at the NDDC where he was the financial czar was still alive. But time is a Judge and a thief of dreams!
Ogiri soon realised how much had been reconfigured in his political haven between the general election of 2015 and the rerun in 2016. A man of figures and computation, he had to take the lesser risk. Stay aloof and rot or take the path to redemption.
Now comes the REAL GIST. All those who can neither stomach Ogiri’s decision nor Amaechi’s to accept his old pal missed this critical point: The political correctness of Ogiri’s decision to travel on Prodigal Street.
Besides the godfather of modern Rivers politics and scion of the Melford Okilo political dynasty in old Rivers State (now Rivers and Bayelsa) Chief Rufus Ada George, and his former deputy Dr. Peter Odili, every other politician at that level has moved tent on grounds of expediency.
Rotimi Amaechi moved to the APC from the PDP when the Goodluck Jonathan presidency declared war on all fronts against him. Prior to his, Abiye Sekibo moved to the defunct ACN from the PDP to contest for the 2011 governorship. Celestine Omehia did exit the PDP too for APGA in 2011 to have a fresh bite of the cherry. Both guys have since returned to the PDP. Nyesom Wike has moved too, albeit in a fantastically different manner.
In deploying his arsenal of war against Amaechi’s altruism to swing political power at the Brick House to another senatorial district and away from the upland section of the State – for the first time since the advent of the 4th Republic in 1999 – Wike returned to the same folks he made castaways in the PDP. Â These guys were among the men Wike banished from the orbit around which Amaechi’s political life revolved while operating as his right hand man between the battle for Government House against the Odili/Omehia flank of the PDP in 2007 and 2011. Others include Odili himself, Lolo T. Ibieneye, Nwuke Anucha and others who were locked up on framed charges by the former Government House Chief of Staff as cultists and their attempt to run a parallel PDP State Secretariat away from #23 Aba Road knocked down by him. Only a few who still attach value to their personal dignity after the gory experience at the parallel office along Ohaeto Street, D/Line and in police cells declined buying into Wike’s entreaties when he returned to get them to buy into his Amaechi-is-the-problem agenda en route Government House. Several others did. Just as the incumbent governor is equally guilty of swallowing his vomit by running back to Dr. Odili and his men; for rewarding the Omehia he viciously fought out of Government House with a restoration; for uniting old foes in Odili and Sergeant Awuse, etc, etc.
The narrative has so many acts and scenes between 2012 to 2015 and now not worth recounting here. However, like they always say, sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof. We may not know the details now but like others, Dr. Henry Ogiri has engaged the reverse gear after seeing the end of the road in the wrong direction he was headed on his part of the Rivers political journey.
The youths of Rivers State who are always at daggers drawn in the name of defence of one political interest or another – who are of course the real scorched earth under the feet of the political gladiators – have lessons to learn in all these. It is certainly not enough to bay for the blood of Ogiri for leaving the PDP or for shunting the queues to the front in the APC. There is a lesson in this for those youths who bear arms against other Rivers people over political differences; to “win” elections; or intimidate political opponents. It’s all clear stupidity! The media should ceasefire too on running critical stories on Ogiri and bear the same burden of guilt of expediency by stoking the fire in Rivers politics without the conviction of standing for and by the truth.
Now that the sun has gone down  today with the images of an Ogiri beside Amaechi, I hope the controversy of Ogiri’s switch to the APC will not rise with it tomorrow morning!
