Rivers’ first civilian gov, Okilo, is dead
From Segun James in Yenagoa, This Day of 07.07.2008
This Day Newspaper of Monday, July 7,
2008
The first
Executive Governor of old Rivers State, Chief Melford Okilo, is dead. Okilo, a
Senator in the Federal Republic between 1999 and 2003, died at the Federal
Medical Centre (FMC), Yenagoa, where he was taken following an illness
associated with old age.
Okilo, who
hailed from Emakalakala in Ogbia Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, was an
astute politician and the first elected civilian governor of the old Rivers
State during the Second Republic. He won the 1979
governorship election under the platform of the National Party of Nigeria
(NPN). He also won a
re-election under the same platform in 1983 before Gen. Muhammadu Buhari
truncated the tenure in the same year. In 1999, he
contested and won the Bayelsa East Senatorial seat to represent the area in the
Senate from 1999 to 2003. He was also a
Minister of Commerce in the government of late Gen. Sani Abacha. Confirming the
death to newsmen in Yenagoa, Okilo’s son, Dr. Aranye Okilo, said the former
governor took ill last week and was rushed to the FMC but gave up the ghost
early morning Saturday. He said the
body had been deposited at an undisclosed morgue in Port Harcourt pending a
formal report to the state government and the Ogbia people, amongst whom he was
a very high chief. In 2005, there
was a rumour that Chief Okilo had died, but later resurfaced in Yenagoa, where
he addressed a press conference on the state of his health. He had said
that he was in a trance for four days and people thought he was dead. Bayelsa
Governor Timipre Sylva had approved medical allowance for Okilo to travel
abroad last year for his yearly medical check up in the United States of
America, but the facility could not be extended to him this year following the
political crisis that led to the annulment of the election that brought in the
governor. Also, a
one-time governorship flag bearer of the National Republican Party (NRC) in the
old Rivers State, Chief Zebulon Abule, also died midweek. Abule, a
politician, industrialist and philanthropist hailed from Diebu in Southern Ijaw
Local Government Area of Bayelsa State. All efforts to
get the Bayelsa State government’s reactions on the death of both men
were unsuccessful as at press time.