Sacrilege: King Alfred Diete Spiff, First Class Traditional Ruler Sacked By Youths |The Source

By  Adesina Soyooye

A first class Traditional Ruler  in Bayelsa State, King Alfred Diete Spiff, has been sacked from his Palace.

Diete Spiff is the King of Twon, Brass.

A six-footer and a retired Naval Officer, King-Diete Spiff barely escaped with his skin when angry youths invaded his Palace, carrying all kinds of weapons, and destroyed everything they could.

The youths who had, initially, blocked the AGIP Export Terminal were, allegedly, protesting power outage.

It is not known why or, at what point, the youths decided to take their anger out on King Spiff, but reports say he managed to escape.

A video of the attack was scary, as the youths concentrated on destroying everything in sight.

Ordinarily, such an attack on a Traditional Ruler of Spiffs status, would be regarded as   a sacrilege. But things have since changed, and most youths neither care, nor respect tradition.

On a number of times, Traditional Rulers had been kidnapped, and a couple of them had been killed by their abductors.

King Diette-Spiff was the first Military Governor of the old Rivers State made up of Rivers and Bayelsa State.

He was appointed during the General Yakubu Gowon Regime at a very young age.

He was in office from 1967 to 1975 when a coup swept Gowon and his regime out of office.

Diete-Spiff’s tenure as the Military Governor of old Rivers State was marked by controversies. He superintendent over the obnoxious Abandoned Property, during which the Igbo were dispossessed of their properties in Port Harcourt which they left and ran to their villages during the war.

Also, as Military Governor, he supervised over the humiliation of a Journalist with the Government-owned Tide Newspaper, Mr Amakri, for allegedly criticising his Government.

He had Amakri brought to Government House, ordered soldiers to shave his hair with a broken bottle, and had him flogged.

Now, his own humiliation came from youths in his community, obviously the age of Amakri at the time.