Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Wike wained: I am loyal to President Jonathan, not Amaechi



Supervising Minister of Education, Nyesom Wike, on Monday declared that he was not loyal to Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, but to President Goodluck Jonathan and the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Wike spoke on Channels Television morning programme ‘Sunrise Daily’.
According to him, his allegiance can never be to the governor, adding that his political history was not connected to Amaechi.
“I was the chairman of Obiakpor Local Government when Amaechi was

Speaker of the Assembly,” he said.
Commenting on the crisis in the state, the Minister recalled that it began when Amaechi decided to join the All Progressives Congress (APC) against the cultural and historical background of the state.
“The state had enjoyed political peace until Governor Chibuike Amaechi came into office, he alleged.
“When you are given a mandate and that mandate is given to you by the people, you must also do something that will make the people want to go along with you.
“The crisis in the state is based on decisions that the governor of the state has taken to lead Rivers State to an opposition, which has not happened since 1967 when Rivers State was created and politically, Rivers State has never played an opposition politics.
“Amaechi thinks that everybody must go along with him and if nobody goes along with him, impunity is there. He is trying to impose his will on the people and that is the reason for the reactions.

“Amaechi is intimidating the Chairman of the Rivers State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Felix Obuah, for going to the court to secure his position against Amaechi’s wishes.
“The governor declared that Obuah’s hotel should be used to build a school and he revoked the Certificate of Occupancy of the hotel, simply because he went to court, and we said that it’s not democracy.
“If somebody feels that he will go to court to realise or get back his mandate, you should encourage him,” Wike alleged.
“We came into office in 2007 and as at 2009-2010, I saw the politics internally and then I called my friends and said, I don’t think it would be proper for me to continue to stay here and that I have to leave.
“I didn’t know that Amaechi had decided a succession plan that he was going to get rid of some people, including myself, that were becoming too powerful in the state, according to his own estimation.
“I decided to run for a seat in the Senate, but before I decided to run for Senate, Peterside Dakuku had come to my house to tell me that the governor feels that I should run for Senate.
“Then I sent a close friend of the governor to him, to confirm what Dakuku informed me. He said yes, he’s encouraging that I should run for a seat in the Senate.
“Then something occurred to me that something must be going on. I started pursuing the ambition of Senate.
“A day to collection of forms, in the midnight, the governor summoned me, the then party chairman, G.U Ake, and some other people. This was in 2010-2011.
“He said he had fought the wife of the President, they had problems and he doesn’t want to have any further problems with her and there’s no need for me to run for Senate.
“He deterred me from running for Senate because we were both from the same Senatorial district and he wanted to run for Senate in 2015. He had fears that I would want to return to the Senate again,” Wike said.
The Minister further accused Amaechi of planning to eliminate perceived opponents, adding that the fact that the governor had nominated him to be Minister, was part of the plan to get rid of him.

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