Amaechi must be probed, Wike insists

Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State has said that there exists evidence of corruption against the immediate past administration of Chibuike Amaechi.

Wike told Rivers State Council of Traditional Rulers in Port Harcourt yesterday that Amaechi admitted paying $39 million for a non-existent Justice Karibi Whyte Mega Specialist Hospital and sold the state’s gas turbines.

He alleged that the immediate past administration diverted the funds realised from the sales of gas turbines. “All the documents that proved Amaechi’s corrupt acts are authentic. We never forged documents. The former governor himself admitted that he paid out $39 million to Clinotech without a single block laid anywhere. Is that a document he claims was forged? Where is the hospital?

“He has agreed in different interviews that he sold the state gas turbines for $309 million. Convert $309 million to naira and you will understand the level of fraud. Amaechi left only $204,000 in the state account.

“The bank statements of the pattern of withdrawals from that account are there for all to see. Can that be forged? The dates and amounts withdrawn are clearly written,” the governor said.

Wike, who at the weekend announced the revocation of the Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) of a major hotel in Port Harcourt where officials of All Progressives Congress (APC) had stormed to protest the flawed conduct of the party’s local council congress, warned that any hotel that opens its facility for electoral fraud and malpractices would lose its operational certificate of occupancy.

“Any hotel that is used to rig elections, that hotel’s certificate of occupancy will be withdrawn. I will not allow that anymore,” he said. He, therefore, warned traditional rulers against working with armed gangs to cause insecurity in their communities.

Meanwhile, Amaechi had claimed that Wike wanted to use the elaborately distorted and most times outrightly but carefully forged documents to persecute and prosecute him in court.

He said in the past couple of days, Wike had been telling people that he would certainly get a judgment against him in the law court on spurious charges of corruption using his forged documents because he (Wike) is in control of the Judiciary at the state and national level.

“For the avoidance of doubt, we wish to state that Wike has been boasting that he has the judges in the Rivers State in his pocket, that he’s in full control and that the State judiciary would always give him any judgement he wants against Amaechi. Furthermore, Wike is bragging that the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) is his ‘main man’, that would readily and easily assist him get any judgement he wants against Amaechi at the apex court, using his contorted documents. Wike is also telling anyone who cares to listen that the Supreme Court (Justices) and judges generally are not happy with Amaechi and so they would easily convict him with any forged document he presents in court. Power drunk Wike is using the recent visit of the CJN to Rivers State as his bragging right to prove his ‘extreme’ closeness to the CJN,” he added.