Amaechi Tackles Wike Over $150m Allegation

Amaechi-Nyesom-WikeFormer governor of Rivers State now Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, has described the statement credited to Governor Nyesom Wike that he took $150 million belonging to the state to fund the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the 2015 general election as an imaginary tale, a bogus and fallacious concoction.

Wike made the allegation on Sunday during a thanksgiving service in Port Harcourt to celebrate his victory at the Supreme Court.

The Minister said the latest allegation was in furtherance of the irresponsible, repugnant and contemptuous, albeit, feckless mission of the Wike administration’s one-point agenda to denigrate and disparage his person and the office he occupied as a former governor of the state.

Amaechi also said that all efforts by Wike and his cohorts to denigrate his name in the media will fail.

In a statement by the media office of the minister on Monday, Amaechi said that it was worrisome and sad that Governor Wike picked a church, a sacred temple of God, to tell his tales.

He said, “It continues to baffle us, like most right-thinking Nigerians that Governor Wike will stand in a church, a solemn place of worship, and carelessly, brusquely tell such a profound lie. He condescendingly descended to falsely and indecorously shout corruption against Amaechi without providing a single shred of evidence to back his claims.

“The ‘story-story’ this time is about another phantom $150 million that Amaechi purportedly stole from Rivers State Government coffers and siphoned to his party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, within 18 days, from December 1 to 18 of 2014. This new scurrilous fabrication by Governor Wike is in sync with the one-point agenda of the Wike administration, which is to throw as much mud as possible at former governor Amaechi, hoping that some may at least stick. All sorts of spurious stories about alleged corruption and stealing of state funds against the Amaechi administration, have been bandied in the media with no attempt to substantiate or prove these distorted false claims that completely make nonsense of common sense.

“Even, when Amaechi challenged the Wike administration and its agents to use any constitutionally available legal process or procedure to prove their jaundiced, deceitful allegations against him and his administration, they have rather elected to do their own corruption probe, trial and conviction in the media, and now, even inside our solemn places of worship.

“Why would a government be so determined to desecrate and destroy every institution all in the name of playing politics?”

He challenged Governor Wike to explain to Nigerians how the money transfer was done and where it was transffered from.

“Governor Wike should tell Nigerians who collected the $150 million on behalf of APC. From which state government account(s) was the $150 million taken? How was the $150 million taken and given to APC? Was it by wired transfer from Rivers State Government account(s) to APC account(s)?

“Rivers people and Nigerians are indeed sick and tired of this old worn-out trick of Governor Wike to hoodwink and distract Rivers people from the real issues. Making a new spurious allegation of corruption against Amaechi every day will not make Rivers people forget that most of the beautiful, working institutions built by the Amaechi administration are now being allowed to rot away despite of the billions of naira that had accrued to the state and the billions of naira borrowed by Wike. Rivers people want to know why weeds and grasses have taken over the beautiful schools built by Amaechi”.