The Rivers State government has said that transport minister, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi has to tell the people of the state how he spent the N3 trillion that accrued to the state for eight years that he served as Governor.
The commissioner for information, Dr. Austin Tam-George, who stated this at a briefing on the Supreme Court judgment that upheld the election of Governor Nyesom Wike, said that Amaechi left “a catastrophic legacy” that made his administration one which left behind the highest number of abandoned projects in the state’s history.
“Rivers State is still reeling from the catastrophic legacy of the Rotimi Amaechi years. Despite receiving over three trillion naira in revenue in eight years, Amaechi left the most abandoned projects in the history of Rivers State since 1967,” he said.
He said that the abandoned monorail project, which N60 billion was pumped into, and many other projects were never intended to benefit the people of the state.
He said that the state would initiate a criminal investigation into how the money that came to the state during Amaechi’s time in office was spent, including the N82 million that was spent on a dinner for Prof. Wole Soyinka.
Tam-George, said there was nothing wrong in hosting Soyinka to a dinner, but said that at the time in question, the state owed workers four months salaries, and pensioners, stressing that the Noble Laureate had the “moral accountability of rejecting such feast in the face of such situation.”
He said that the Wike administration was considering the N82 Million dinner as a crime against the people of the state, stressing that the state can deal with crime of incompetence, but not crime against the state.
He said: “Thousands of workers were without their salaries fo four months, ages pensioners faced starvation without their pension for eight months and thousands of teachers were not paid for nearly 12 months.”
He said that the Supreme Court judgment proved that sovereignty belongs to the people of the state.
“As we all celebrate this victory of democracy, there is need for the people to be vigilant against reactionary politicians that seem determined to roll back the gains made so fa by the Wike administration.