Amaechi Reverses, Criminates Wike Of N45bn Loan Diversion

The erstwhile governor of the oil rich sate stated this on Sunday, October 25, during a special thanksgiving service organised to mark the October 25 ruling of the Supreme Court, which brought him into power as governor in 2007. In the statement, the former governor said that he had borrowed

N300bn, subsequently paid N245bn back and left about N15bn in the state coffers; only for the present administration led by

Governor Wike not to be borrowing to pay contractors but borrowing for their personal gratification.

Amaechi said: “Borrow to pay contractors not for your purse. They have borrowed N45bn and nobody is seeing it. If you put N45bn in the state economy, the state will be bouncing. They will employ more workers, pay them and you will see things working.”

Lamenting the situation of things in the state, Amaechi who is also a prospective minister maintained that projects embarked upon by his administration were valuable adding that it was those roads which he constructed that they are driving on. Amaechi said that he also constructed the stadium which Governor Wike and his team are driving on. He stressed that he had built underground gutter but that the current administration was building

gutter to cover up the one he had made.

However, Opunabo Inko-Tariah, Governor Wike’s special adviser on media and publicity, in reaction to the N45 billion diversion allegation described it as malicious and spurious. He said: “On the malicious and spurious allegation by Rotimi

Amaechi that Governor Wike borrowed N45 billion to line his pocket, it is laughable. Amaechi himself in one of his speeches said Governor Wike would inherit an empty

treasury which was fleeced dry by him.

“Therefore, if Governor Wike who inherited an empty treasury could achieve the level of infrastructural development we are witnessing today and can also clear the unjustifiable liabilities he inherited from Amaechi as evidenced in his speech, where then did he get the money from to do all that that have put smiles on the faces of

Rivers people who were despondent and frustrated under Amaechi if not with the loans he collected with the imprimatur of the House of Assembly?

“This obviates the need for any further evidence that the loans collected were judiciously applied and in tandem with

the reasons for which they were collected. The allegation has no ounce of truth in it. Rivers people are quite intelligent to be deluded by such cheap lies.” Meanwhile, the assistant general superintendent of the Assemblies of God church has dragged the factional general superintendent and

six others to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for allegedly diverting the church’s fund into personal use.