Nelson A. Osuala[29 July 2016] 08:05AM
The incumbent Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, who was the erstwhile Governor of Rivers, has blatantly denied allegations of Money laundering and embezzlement from the state's treasury when he was a seating governor.
The erstwhile Governor and minister of Transport, said this during a speech at a stakeholders’ forum on Sqcorruption which was organised by the Federal Ministry of Justice in Abuja yesterday, Thursday 28 July 2016.
You would recall that there seems to have been a secret battle and war of words that had long existed between the former governor and his successor, Nyesome Wike especially when the former (Amaechi) having envisioned the fall of PDP did decamp to APC.
He was then dubbed as Corrupt having looted the state of money meant for her development. It was therefore to such allegation that the now minister of transportation, Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi did deny.
In his words:
“If you had followed the Rivers State government when I was governor, we were the first state to introduce the Public Procurement Law in the country.
The state cabinet used to call the Director General of Public Procurement in the state as an alternative governor, that they wanted an amendment to that law.
The reason they wanted amendment is that he (DG) refused to increase the threshold to one hundred million naira, per ministry, instead he reduced it to 10 million naira.
I had a battle with him (DG BPE) and the world bank who insisted that we should not go for an amendment but should persuade him to increase the threshold.
I remember the cabinet tried to go to court against him and I remember that he was also trying to go to court against Commissioners.
In fact, the procurement DG wrote a memo that I felt was very incriminating requesting that since the law requires the governor to take any commissioner who doesn’t comply with the public procurement law to court, I should please take the commissioner of education to court for not complying…
Everybody in the cabinet felt that he was an alternative governor, they felt that he was slowing the process,” .
Mr. Amaechi argues that transparency in the use of public funds was key to his administration as governor, and that his Rivers community was fully briefed periodically on how those state funds were being utilised.
He further asserted that,
“Within that period we insisted on engaging the indigenous communities on how much we received and how we spent the money. That is why I feel that after this ministerial appointment, I should do everything possible to stay away from government because in spite of all the forms of transparency I introduced in government, one man could begin to tell lies to Nigerians and Nigerians would believe him.
Reacting to his successor allegations, he argued thus:
"The governor of Rivers State said I squandered N3 trillion naira. I did not receive up to N1.8 trillion naira as governor both from IGR and funds from federal allocation.
So, how could I have squandered money I did not even receive in the first place? You can see the politics of lies and lies.
As Minister of Transportation, I run an open and transparent system. I believe in name and shame.
What name and shame does is, if you name and shame those of them who don’t have conscience they won’t come to public functions.
I do have conscience. In fact, it was the word corruption that brought me to this occasion because I wanted to see who will get up and say to me, ‘this is evidence that you are corrupt.
We went to court against the Rivers State government on their allegation of corruption against me. The Court of Appeal said, produce that document that found this man (Amaechi) guilty of those crimes and up till today he (Wike) has not produced it,” he asserts.
Nelson A.Osuala
Is a Blogger & the Associate Editor of negroidhaven.org
(negroidhaven)
