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Dikibo: Sunset in the darkling plains… By
Aminisoari Kala Dikibo. Sunset met him in the darkling plains… born into an aquatic terrain, of Izon extraction in the a salty waters of Okirika in Rivers State. Most probably, he must have been bred and brewed like most of his kinsmen in his days and he must have had a large dose of akpeteshi as a young boy.
It was strange for a man leaving his aquatic base to come to a tragic and sorry pass in the sparse forests and plains of Nsukwa and Isheagu plains, cut down like a common criminal in the hands of who? Only God knows. No prophet born of man and woman can tell with clinical exactitude the manner of his passing on at a time when great matters of urgent national importance were about to be discussed in the capital of the pace-setting big Heart… DELTA. He did not get to Asaba, live, only as a corpse.
The shock waves his death sent down the spines of Deltans must have been troubling, because, the next morning, February 7th, a South-South meeting of PDP top-notchers at all levels and stakeholders of the zone were ready for a meeting to take decisions that were dear to the survival of the people. The previous day, February 6, the Supreme Court had delivered a landmark judgment in which both parties were asked to return to the lower court for a de novo trial concerning the saga of an ex-convict case and the state government and all functionaries were in very high spirits that the Supreme Court actually behaved supremely without fear or favour. Unknown to everybody by 7:30 p.m. that same Good Friday, my brother A.K. Dikibo, a gentleman’s gentleman, a man in his late sixties, who could hardly hurt a fly had been dispatched to the great beyond in a most bestial manner by agents of darkness.
Call it butchery at sunset, if you like, of a defenceless elder statesman, plain-talking Izon man, truthful Izonman, principled to a fault, and like all typical Izonmen of the old school, not quickly moved to anger, but he would defend his right to speak the truth, most especially on the side of truth, no matter whose ox is gored, even if, it were that belonging to Al Gore. Unlike the present day Izonman, whose blood boils at short notice, as if possessed of spirits, in a season of restiveness now pervading the oil belt within the Niger Delta. If the late Dikibo had been allowed to partake in the esoteric potions of the Egbesu Deity – their fighting god, perhaps, Dikibo would not have died a cockroach death. The Egbesu generation of Izon, would not be caught napping like pa Dikibo did by leaving his flanks and rearsides open, unarmed, unattended to by a host of these hairy-chested youths, whom he could hire for a token fee.
That our Dikibo, a powerful force within the PDP hierarchy, a man trusted and believed in by all Governors of the South-South, having fought stoutly in their defence and their rights, when oppressors of the system wanted to deprive them of their rights for a second coming for the 2003 Governorship elections, Pa A.K. Dikibo stood like an Iroko tree. When will such man come our way? When comes another DIKIBO? My lamentation for Dikibo arises, not so much the manner of his death as was described by our charming Governor James Ibori, form the briefings from the State Commissioners of Police, Mr. Charles Akaya. The Saturday morning before the mourning crowd at the Unity Hall where delegates had gathered to talk about the ways forward for the South-South minority.
Just at about when the Governor was breaking the news to the bewildered audience of senators, Party Chairmen, Governors and Deputy Governors, I stepped into Unity Hall and saw Governor Ibori dressed in a dark long-Senegales robe, spoke in measured tones to the effect that “we have lost our leader, a gem, irreplaceable for that matter, in A.K. Dikibo in the surburbs of Isheagu in Aniocha South by one mystery bullet from God knows where? The sketchy accounts went something like this. Chief A.K. Dikibo, ostensibly, came through the East-West road from Port Harcourt. They must have allowed him to pass through the Rivers State, and entered Bayelsa, headed for Delta via patani the Izon-terrain.
They allowed him to pass through Ughelli the Urhobo neighbourhood, through Isoko, Emevor, Oleh roundabout and Ozoro, headed towards Kwale, emptying into the Anioma part of Delta, where our Igbo-speaking brothers live. According to the initial reports two cars were ahead of Dikobo’s vehicle and the sun had receded into the horizone by 7:30 or thereabouts. These two vehicles made a sudden U-turn and headed towards the Isheagu end of the road, then a confused Dikibo could not understand what was amiss. “What is happening, he murmured in fear and before one said Jack Robinson, a professional hand trained in the art of liquidating fellow humans with accuracy and precision must have pulled the trigger, telegraphing the lethal bullet into the skull of our Pa Dikibo. Dikibo died with a shattered brain”.
Governor Ibori exclaimed “They may have succeeded in killing his body but his soul they cannot touch” and he wept. There was silence in the Hall when Governor Ibori wanted to give us snippets into the way and manner Pa Dikibo was wasted. Internal weeping overnight and tears were seen welling up in the Governor’s eyes and for a brief moment, he got stuck, as if a big boulder of rock has been forced down his throat. Ibori wept, for Dikibo.
He called off the meeting until a more auspicious moment, sine die. One is not interested in manufacturing reasons why these killings take place because it is probably the nature of the style and method of killings. It is systemic, cocooned in the deeper recesses of deep throats in a conspiratorial syndrome. The system cannot and can never decode the systemic killers because it is unsystemic so to decode. May 2004
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