Governor Amaechi Tell President Jonathan To Be Careful Not To Use The Military Like Abacha

Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers state was guest on AIT’s Focus Nigeria with Gbenga Ariuleba Tuesday where he spoke on various issues ranging from his achievements to the issues between him and President Jonathan.

The governor who just celebrated his seventh year in office said that the rally held was a mammoth one that could not be forgotten in the history of the state, as he quelled rumours renting the airwaves especially on social media that the crowd at the event was rented.

“How can we rent 70000 persons, we must be very rich. You know when people can’t pull such a crowd they give reasons for their failure. We wanted to show acceptability, I couldn’t have been governor for seven years, speaker for eight years, and being a progressive governor and a progressive speaker who has been people oriented and I can’t move that kind of crowd.

Speaking on the forthcoming elections, governor Amaechi said that the votes of the people should be the deciding factor.

“The problem we have is that the federal government must allow the people to vote, and this takes me to the statement by Reuben Abati when he said a day of reckoning is coming, which means he has already declared President Goodluck Jonathan the winner of 2015 elections because he said that I will be punished when they win their second term. Now with that kind of crowd in Rivers state how do you defeat us?

“The point we made there is that everybody should come with their voters’ card and that they are registered voters, and in the past, opposition has never scored up to 100000 votes and if we could bring in 70000 persons and as we were departing that place more persons were coming in so you could have imagine how many persons.

“And the last time PDP held a rally in the 16000 capacity stadium in Elekahia addressed by the President over twenty persons died, we had 70000 persons and nobody died. It is the glory of God.”

The governor also spoke on his achievements in the last seven years with his mission statement anchored on ‘Accountability and Responsibility to the People’.

“We believe first that the government must be accountable to the people because you are a staff of the people, you are employed by the people. You really need to let the people be your master, you need to move form being an Emperor, His Imperial Majesty to being the people’s man, to being the same Amaechi they used to know, the same man they meet on the streets, the same person that used to drive rickety cars and not a demigod, you must be that person that they can approach, the person that they can tell how they feel and understands their problem.

“Whatever informed my decision having taken over office as governor was to find a way to meet tis people in a position were you can remedy the situation. I hear now that they are doing ‘stomach infrastructure’ at the national level, and I say to them that if they gave me ‘stomach infrastructure’ I wouldn’t have been governor.

“What my parents gave to me was education and they education was nearly free and it was public schools, so I said I would build public schools, and get people to attend those schools, and not only did I build those schools, I made sure they were free. 

I made people interface with computers then I made sure children did not attend schools were there are between 150-200 children in a class and the teacher would hardly know the names of the pupils. So I made sure that each class will contain only 30 children and those who want to be governor now were telling me then that Your Excellency you won’t win elections this way, you must also add giving them money, you must share this money, and I said I have no money to share.

“Don’t forget that by the time I took over as governor, we had security crisis, and it needed to be addressed and the security crisis then in Rivers state was just caused by the fact that the people were poor, so I had to introduce free education, free healthcare, and then I made sure that we took away over 2000 children out of Rivers state overseas to study, and we just approved money to pay them their pending allowances but the reason why we are unable to pay them as at when due is because all our money has been stolen and it is worsened by the fact now that oil prices are  coming down. But even though oil prices are coming down, don’t forget that the benchmark for this year’s budget is $78 per barrel and we are still selling at $86 per barrel so where is the difference?”

He said that his administration has transformed the health sector and that on resumption of office the state had only 200 doctors which was increased to 600 and that 150 of them were sent to rural areas aside the fact that 140 health centres were also built.

He also spoke in defence of his administration despite the various criticisms he received especially concerning the health and education sector from one of the governorship aspirants that all of the model schools are located only within Port Harcourt stating that such criticisms were spurious, bogus and blatant lies and that it is only in very few villages that primary schools could not be seen. 

He said his administration had a target of 750 model primary schools and that 500 have so far been completed and that presently 300 are being furnished and that before his exits office, all 500 will be furnished.

He also said that they were to build 24 model secondary schools, but that 7 have been completed but only 1 is functional because it is run for free and that those who manage the school are paid N800 million and that in the last WASSCE there was 100% success from the school.

The governor said that they holistically looked at the education problem in the state before they employed 13000 teachers and that 60% of schools in the state had just two teachers and that the actual number of teachers needed in both primary and secondary schools amount to 91000.

Speaking on his greatest achievement, the governor said, “I get joyous when I go outside the country, make a speech and at the end of that speech someone walks up to me and tells me he/she is a Rivers state government scholar. I went to Oxford University and I was very happy when I met few of them. I went to Germany and met 15 students studying medicine and they said we left our different schools to come to thank you for this opportunity. The joy that I have knows no bound, because at that point I now believe that my son is not the only person that has such an opportunity, that one poor man’s son has the same opportunity.”

Speaking on security issues in the country, he said that he worries on what is going on presently with the Nigeria Police Force.

“We don’t have a Nigeria Police we have a PDP Police. Honestly it worries me so badly that I would want to look at what is going on with the Speaker. The SSS and the Nigeria Police have no business whatsoever to determine who becomes the Speaker of the House. You can’t tell me who to or who not to post to the speaker. A man has moved from party A to party B, it is not the Police’s business, it is not the business of the SSS, your job is to provide the man security until the day says he is no, longer our Speaker nobody has been so appoint ted, so tell me this people that are taking this position, how they will manage the next election. The next election has been determined already by the security forces.

“As a governor, you have two choices to make, the choice to steal money or the choice to use the money to serve the people, and either of them your name will be in the book of history, either for good or for bad,” he said.

He stated that he was the first governor to start publishing his salary and allowances and how they were spend and that his commissioners told him to do delayed broadcast but that he said it wants it live.

Speaking on the relationship between him and the President he debunked the claim that he was the cause of its degeneration.

“The president has no business interfering with the election of the chairman of Governors’ Forum and I did advise that they should advise the president not to interfere because I would defeat them, and I did.

“Like I said at the rally, there is not federal presence in Rivers state at all. Nothing has happened on the UNEP report directing Shell to provide $1 million to clean Ogoni land. The money is coming from Shell; all the president will do is to authorize the money for the clean up of Ogoni. So what will you tell Ogoni people when you start campaigning.

He also spoke on the taking of the Soku oil wells and the corruption in the system saying that with an APC Presidency, corruption will end, saying that money meant for the states are being shared by the federal government.

“As far as this situation is concerned, the Soku oil wells has gone to Bayelsa, the only way it can come back to Rivers state is if there is a new president who will bring an independent body to look at the issues but currently, the president is seeing it from the eye of somebody from Bayelsa.

"I respect the president as a person. He is a gentle man, he is a good man but there is no morality in governance. There is no goodness in governance. If you want to be moral or want to be a good man, go to church. Right there when it comes to governance, it’s about the people. It is about delivering to the people. It is about competence. It is about your ability to perform. It is not about going to church everyday to clap your hands. So while you look at the President and you say he is a gentle man, you should also look at somebody in terms of performance. 

But even those who say he is a good man, what about the fact that you can compare his government to Abacha's government. What is the difference? TAN! Singing everywhere one million man match, can you compare the two?

“TAN, they are getting how many signatures? 17 million? They got 17million Nigerians to sign to vote. That's how they voted for Governors’ Forum. They say everybody signed for Governor's forum. Sign to vote. Now if you compare this, compare again the use of the military under Abacha and how the President is using the military against citizens, can you see the two? I say to people, if I were to be an adviser to the President, I would say watch, ...history, history is repeating itself and you should be careful,” he said.