Former Rivers State Governor, Hon. Chibuike Amaechi, said Wednesday that the purported probe of his tenure as governor by his successor, Nyesom Wike, was a deliberate mission to dub him corrupt.
According to Amaechi, Wike has gone ahead with his plan of threatening, coercing and blackmailing officials of his administration, especially civil servants into making false, phony and bogus statements that would make legitimate government transactions appear as corrupt practices.
The former governor, in a statement by his media aide, David Iyofor, urged Rivers people, the media and the public to be watchful, vigilant and discern the fraudulent acts of Wike to make him and his administration look bad.
Amaechi had on several occasion rated himself high on probity and delivery of democracy dividend to people of the Rivers State.
He was a consistent traducer of the outgone administration of President Goodluck Jonathan, whom he accused of all manners of acts of corruption.
According to Amaechi, “As I noted earlier in a previous statement, Nyesom Wike is going ahead with his plan of attempting to deride and discredit me and my administration, by blackmailing and coercing key government officials including Directors of Finance and Administration (DFAs), permanent secretaries and others to twist and distort legitimate government transactions in his desperation to cook up, and fabricate baseless, concocted and unfounded cases of corruption against me and the administration I ran.”
“Only yesterday, Tuesday, Wike threatened, harassed, blackmailed and coerced permanent secretaries and DFAs in various ministries, parastatals, agencies etc in the state into doing his bidding of painting Amaechi as corrupt in the administration of the state. The state bankers and some of our contractors are also not spared in this his mission of tarnishing the reputation of Amaechi.
As a matter of fact, Wike has only one agenda as he governs Rivers State- the agenda to portray me as corrupt, by whatever means no matter how ridiculous and phony it looks.”
Amaechi pooh-poohed the video and pictures of the looted and vandalised Government House that Wike has been showing, saying that the “images is also a fraud, arranged and executed by Wike to enable him vote billions of naira from the state treasury to renovate and refurbish the place, while also accusing me of corruption. I repeat, this is clearly a game, a grand conspiracy to siphon state funds under the sub-head of renovating and refurbishing a supposedly ‘vandalised and looted’ Government House, while also falsely smearing my image.
“Wike said the curtains in the governor’s residence were looted, but even in his stage-managed images, you could clearly see that the curtains are still intact. I left Government House intact.
“Rivers people should hold Wike responsible if there’s any looting and vandalism in Government House. There is verifiable information that on May 29, Wike stopped key Government House staff including the Permanent Secretary (who’s the chief accounting officer) from entering the premises, only to shout looting and vandalism 48 hours later. Why were civil servants, including the most senior civil servant in Government House barred from entering the compound on May 29? Was it to give him time and provide cover to stage-managed the shooting of the fraudulent video that he’s now gleefully showing?”
He further urged the public and the media to disregard the phony images by Wike as its contents are fraudulent.
This probe is coming a t a bad time for Amaechi as it might affect his chances of making it to the cabinet of President Muhammad Buhari, who may not want to put anybody with questionable integrity in a key office.
