The immediate past governor of Rivers State, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, has told his successor, Governor Nyesom Wike, to develop the state and stop talking negatively about him.
Amaechi accused Wike of abandoning governance and expressed regret that the governor had always made him (Amaechi) a point of discourse within the past two years.
Speaking on Saturday in Port Harcourt during a lecture organised by the Conscious Reformers Assembly to mark his 52nd birthday, the Minister of Transportation wondered why the governor said he (Amaechi) did not achieve anything during his eight years as governor of the state.
Amaechi said, “The governor is spending two years trying to convince people that I did nothing as a governor. In Ekpeye Kingdom, I built roads; I built schools. All the former governors and Shell built 725 schools. But when I was governor, I built 750 schools.
“I guaranteed free education, but two years after I left as governor, they are still talking about Amaechi. They should stop talking about me. They should shut up and start doing something. In my regime, I built Golf Estate and Rainbow Housing Estate, but they say I did not do anything.
“They say I did not build roads, but the road to the airport that they use, I built it. They are deceiving you. They don’t want the campaign (in 2019) to be on development. They want it to be on Amaechi. We will direct the campaign.”
Continuing, the minister, who is the leader of the All Progressives Congress in Rivers State, explained that he tackled insecurity in the state six months after he was sworn in as governor, but expressed regret that people were being beheaded in the state after he left the seat.
“I spent four years working without talking to anybody. The governor is distracting himself. Tell him to sit down and walk. He will not win at the end of his four years (as governor).
“How can a man stay in a stadium that I built and in Obi Wali Centre that I built and say that I did not do anything as a governor,” Amaechi added.
Amaechi also informed the crowd made up of mostly APC members that he would reorganise the party structure in the state by December 2017, adding that those who did not wish to join him could leave.
He said he had been betrayed by those close to him more than any politician in the country.
Reacting, the state Commissioner for Information, Dr. Austin Tam-George, said Amaechi, who “appeared to be in a campaign mood,” was planning to impose a governor on the state.
Tam-George said, “His intention obviously is to impose a governor on Rivers State, through subterfuge and electoral gerrymandering in 2019. It is a classic case of a rapist returning to his victim to ask for love.
“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.’’
According to the commissioner, Amaechi’s “thoughtless policies and reckless public spending” literally broke the economic spine of the state.
“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,” Tam-George said.
source:punch
