The Rivers State chapter of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has warned Governor Rotimi Amaechi to stop insulting President Goodluck Jonathan and his wife, Dame Patience.
The party accused Mr. Amaechi of dragging the names of the president and first lady in the mud with his resort to blaming them for his entire political predicament.
It would be recalled that Gov. Amaechi during his appearance before the National Human Rights Commission, NHRC, last Friday in Abuja, accused Dame Patience of influencing the February posting of Mr. Joseph Mbu, who was Commissioner of Police in Oyo State to Rivers to allegedly do the dirty jobs which his predecessor – Mohammed Indabawa – now in Oyo, refused to do.
He also restated his earlier call that Mr. Mbu must be redeployed from Rivers for taking sides in the political crisis rocking the state and behaving like a politician even as he dismissed the proposed national dialogue initiated by President Jonathan as a waste of time.
But the Chairman of Rivers PDP, Chief Felix Obuah, who was speaking with journalists in Port Harcourt, the state capital on Saturday, labelled the governor’s action as irresponsible and irrational and vowed that henceforth, the party will no longer tolerate insults on the president and his wife from Mr. Amaechi.
Mr. Obuah said, “This untoward attitude of Amaechi, which has become his tradition, with no other aim than to lower the reputation and personality of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and son of the Niger Delta in the estimation of the right-thinking members of the society, has continued to be fired and given undue impetus by Governor Amaechi and a few of his friends on this satanic mission, against all wise counsel and good conscience.
“We wonder what Amaechi further intends to achieve by repeatedly maligning the president and his family and linking them to any predicament that befalls him.”
He added that the PDP is “not happy with this public opprobrium from Amaechi. We will no longer condone this irresponsible, irrational and malicious disrespect for our dear president and his wife, by a paranoid Amaechi.”
“It is regrettable that rather than admit that he is confused and has lost focus, Governor Amaechi deludes himself into believing that the only thing he can do to gain back the confidence and trust of the disappointed Rivers people is to accuse President Jonathan of being responsible for his non-performance.”
According to Mr. Obuah, “The party has noted that what Governor Amaechi has failed to tell the people is whether it is also President Jonathan and his wife that are in custody of the trillions of naira that continue to accrue to the state from both the federal allocation and internally generated revenues that made him (Amaechi) not to deliver to the people the dividends of democracy.”
Obuah added that insulting and casting all manner of aspersions on President Jonathan and his family or anyone else would only aggravate the “governor’s problem”.
Reacting to the remarks by the state PDP chairman, Gov. Amaechi said at no point did he insult the president and his wife but insisted that his statements to the NHRC were factual and could be verified.
He also described Mr. Obuah as confused and an enemy of progress.
Speaking on behalf of the governor, the Chief of Staff, Government House, Port Harcourt, Mr. Tony Okocha said, “Governor Amaechi was elected to serve the people of Rivers State. He has the mandate of Rivers people till 2015 by God’s grace. Confusion and loss of focus exist in the imagination of Obuah and his confused supporters.
“There is nothing wrong in the governor telling his people about what is going on around him and the state, especially unpalatable incidents in the state. He (Amaechi) is not insulting the President. What he said are statements of fact that are verifiable,” Okocha said.
On the allegation by Mr. Obuah that state funds running to trillions of Naira have not been judiciously utilized to the benefit of the people, the Chief of Staff stated that, “Rivers people know that Governor Amaechi has been performing well and delivering the dividends of democracy. The developmental strides of Governor Amaechi in Rivers State are unprecedented. No Rivers Governor has done one tenth of what Governor Amaechi has done.
“Nothing good can come from the enemies of progress. Obuah and his cohorts have constituted themselves into enemies of the focused Amaechi’s administration. They do not represent Rivers people”, he added.
-The Nation
