•He was indicted, says governor
The Rivers State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC), yesterday said it has uncovered a plot by Governor Nyesom Wike of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to tarnish the image of Minister of Transportation Rotimi Amaechi, who is the leader of APC in the state, on the Ikoyi cash.
Rivers APC, through its Publicity Secretary, Chris Finebone, noted that the plot to rubbish Amaechi, the immediate governor of the state, would involve manifest falsehood, soon to be placed in the media.
Wike, however, alleged that Amaechi was indicted for stealing billions of public funds, by a court-approved judicial panel of inquiry, set up by his administration.
The main opposition APC in Rivers also revealed that the plot against the transportation minister would involve extensive forgeries and fabrications of various seemingly-sensitive documents to further buttress the lie that the Osborne Road, Ikoyi money, confiscated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), belonged to Amaechi and that he allegedly obtained it from the coffers of Rivers government, while he was governor of the state.
The party said: “Initially, when Wike claimed that the Osborne Road, Ikoyi money belonged to Rivers State, the EFCC presented an ample opportunity for the Rivers governor to step forward and provide evidence and possibly pick up the money, but he (Wike) chickened out, until the period granted by the court elapsed. Wike did not take advantage of that window, because he had no iota of evidence and he knew it. The present devilish efforts by Wike to pour tar on Amaechi will go the futile way of the governor’s previous efforts.
“APC is saddened that more than two years after being sworn in as the governor of Rivers State, Wike is still hell-bent on destroying the image of his former boss, benefactor and predecessor. We wish to remind him that his evil plans for the man who gave him a lift in life will continue to fail to his grief.
“We note that instead of aimlessly deceiving himself in his cocoon of self-delusion that he can bring down Amaechi, the APC would like the Rivers governor to settle the scores he has with his own dishonorable reputation of lies and deceit.
“Wike stood before God and men in a church in Etche LGA of Rivers State to lie, when he claimed that the Federal Government was undermining his government by slashing the state’s monthly allocations. He refused to tell the truth that he had earlier pledged a good chunk of the state’s future monthly allocations as collateral security to commercial banks for the huge loans he took at double digit interest rate.
“Like in the case of the federal allocations, the Rivers governor recently told another group of clergymen during a church programme that the Federal Government paid the state only N17 billion as refund on Paris Club loan and not N34 billion, as claimed by the Federal Government. However, evidence made available to the APC by officials of Federal Ministry of Finance indicates that Wike actually signed and collected N34 billion as Paris Club loan refund for Rivers State.”
Rivers APC also stated that it was convinced that Wike, fearing that his lies were about to be made public, decided to raise spurious allegations against the minister of transportation, being his usual style of diverting attention and shifting the focus of public scrutiny from himself.
It noted that if indeed the Rivers governor had any credible evidence that the Ikoyi cash belonged to Amaechi or Rivers government, he would have joyfully approached the EFCC and the court to claim the money, stressing that the present attempt to raise spurious claims, through concocted documents, was mere smokescreen to cover up the obvious lack of transparent governance by Wike.
APC called on Rivers people in particular and Nigerians in general to disregard all forms of fabricated stories that Wike was about floating in the public space through print and electronic media, as well as on the Internet, maintaining that it would continue to deconstruct, demobilise and discredit the grand deceit that the Rivers governor and his mafia government represented.
Wike, through Rivers Commissioner for Information and Communications, Dr. Austin Tam-George, also accused Amaechi of relocating to Port Harcourt to impose a governor on Rivers state, through subterfuge and electoral gerrymandering in 2019, describing the actions as a classic case of a rapist returning to his victim to ask for love.
Rivers governor said: “It is important to constantly remind a forgetful public, that Mr. Amaechi was indicted for stealing billions of public funds, by a court-approved judicial panel of inquiry, set up by the State Government.
“Even by the standards of Nigerian political misbehavior, Mr. Amaechi’s record presents a unique and intriguing specimen.
“Here is a man, whose brazen refusal to pay pensioners their entitlements for six months, contributed to the deaths of hundreds of senior citizens in Rivers State, between 2014 and 2015.
“Mr. Amaechi’s thoughtless policies and reckless public spending literally broke the economic spine of Rivers State. His administration was marked by myth making and public deceit.
“Throughout the 2015 political campaigns, the APC presented itself as a better alternative to the PDP. Mr Amaechi’s adjectival insistence that he is the ‘leader’ of the APC in Rivers State is the clearest indication of the moral carcass that the party of ‘change’ has become in Nigeria.”
Wike admonished Rivers people and other Nigerians to ignore the lies of Amaechi and his factionalised APC.
