MRS. COMFORT EWANG’S KIDNAPPERS NEVER ARRESTED

Dear Editor

MRS. COMFORT EWANG’S KIDNAPPERS NEVER ARRESTED

After reading story planted in two national newspapers of Friday 5/11/10, that the kidnappers of Mrs. Comfort Ewang and the Exxon-Mobil School Principal, Mrs. Lakshmi Tom-Bush have been arrested; I knew that the former A’Ibom Police Commissioner, Walter Rugbere, was again up with his antics just as he was during the kidnap saga of former NYSC DG Gen Akpan.  Till today no names of those he claimed arrested have been released. It will be recalled that those claimed to have been arrested in connection with Mrs. Ewang’s kidnap confessed that they knew nothing about her case but only involved in the kidnap of the wife of the Ibesikpo-Asutan disabled politician.

When a former PDP governorship aspirant, Nsima Ekere’s father was kidnapped it was the same pattern Rugbere towed; but added that his men arrested the old man’s kidnappers from whom N40million ransom money together with assorted arms and ammunitions were recovered. Again during the rescue operation that saw the release of a brother to Senator Bob Effiong from the hands of his kidnappers, Rugbere claimed that his men stormed the kidnappers den, killed three of them while others escaped from a rescue operation that originated from a tip-off; yet none was arrested and not even the bodies of those claimed to have been killed were seen?

But during the assassination of Elder Paul Inyang in a church premise and with the connivance of the former IGP Onovo, former CP Rugbere framed Senator James Udoedeghe, an opponent to Governor Akpabio. In that funny episode the governor ignored the rule of law by ordering that the house of another suspect (Monday Umotong, an earlier beneficiary of Akpabio’s car gift) be levelled. The Nation newspaper’s columnist Mr. Olatunji Dare in his back page (At Home Abroad) column of June 29, 2010 condemned the act as uncivilized and lacked obedience of rule of law by a governor who professed to be a Lawyer.

Furthermore, Rugbere also simply explained away that because some kidnappers were unable to extract an undertaking from the family of an exiled governorship aspirant, the Singapore-based shipbuilder, Engineer Iniekong Udonwa, hence his mother was murdered and dumped naked along a street? What an explanation from a law enforcer? Before the Police Commissioner Rugbere took a bow, he needed to give account of how some criminals (including suspected kidnappers and assassins) were able to plot an escape from the highly secured Ikotakpanabia police detention facility and up till today none has been re-arrested.

Emem Idong, RCC Road, Eket, Akwa Ibom State.