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.
That event was the first time Margaret had opened up on the controversies surrounding her husband’s death.
Alamieyeseigha, fondly called the Governor-General of the Niger Delta during his heyday as governor of Bayelsa State, died at 62 in the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Rivers State.
According to reports, he died of complications arising from high blood pressure and diabetes which affected his kidney.
Alamieyeseigha was the first Executive Governor of Bayelsa State, serving between 1999 and 2005 when he was impeached, following his escape from London to evade justice after he was accused of money laundering.
He was 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 with some journalists recently said 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.”
Source: Punch
