Mrs. Margaret Alamieyeseigha, widow of a former Governor of
Bayelsa State, Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, has accused the Peoples
Democratic Party of being responsible for the death of her husband.
She made the startling revelation during the one-year
memorial event of Alamieyeseigha in the late politician’s country home
in Amassoma, Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of the state, it was
learnt.
That event was the first time Margaret had opened up on the controversies surrounding Alamieyeseigha’s death.
Alamieyeseigha, fondly called the Governor – General of the
Niger Delta during his hey days as governor of Bayelsa State, died at
62 in the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Rivers State.
Alamieyeseigha, according to reports, died of complications
arising from high blood pressure and diabetes which reportedly affected
his kidney.
Alamieyeseigha was the first Executive Governor of Bayelsa
State, serving between 1999 and 2005 before he was impeached, following
his escape from London in order to evade justice after he was accused of
money laundering.
He was, however, later prosecuted in Nigeria, convicted and
jailed for corrupt practices. But he was granted presidential pardon by
his political godson and former President, Goodluck Jonathan.
The widow, who spoke in an interview with some journalists
recently recalled that it was the PDP that frustrated and sent her
husband to his early grave and not the All Progressives Congress as
widely speculated.
She further said, “I can categorically say today that it was
the PDP that arrested my husband, seized all his properties and
humiliated him to the point of death.
“It was the PDP that killed my husband and not the APC. It
was PDP that arrested my husband, it was the PDP that humiliated my
husband and killed him. At the end they seized everything that belonged
to him.
“It was the PDP that tormented my husband and he died as a
result of the humiliation he suffered in the hands of the PDP. As far as
I am concerned, they humiliated us and took everything away from us.”
Mrs. Alamieyeseigha described her husband as a man who
wholeheartedly fought for the emancipation of the Ijaw people but that
it was sad to note that the same people he fought for sold her husband
out to the PDP that “eventually killed him.”
Recounting how her husband was humiliated before he was
arrested, she called on the people of the Ijaw ethnic nationality to
shun acts that might cause them to betray their leaders.
Mrs. Alamieyeseigha added, “When my husband took over the
mantle of leadership, he saw how his people were suffering. As an
intelligent man, he saw the need to fight for resource control as the
way out for his people.