No one can prove I stole Rivers State money – Rotimi Amaechi says
“If
you had followed the Rivers State government when I was governor, we
were the first state to introduce the Public Procurement Law in the
country. The state cabinet used to call the Director General of Public
Procurement in the state as an alternative governor, that they wanted an
amendment to that law. The reason they wanted amendment is that he (DG)
refused to increase the threshold to one hundred million naira, per
ministry, instead he reduced it to 10 million naira. I had a battle with
him (DG BPE) and the world bank who insisted that we should not go for
an amendment but should persuade him to increase the threshold. I
remember the cabinet tried to go to court against him and I remember
that he was also trying to go to court against Commissioners. In fact,
the procurement DG wrote a memo that I felt was very incriminating
requesting that since the law requires the governor to take any
commissioner who doesn’t comply with the public procurement law to
court, I should please take the commissioner of education to court for
not complying… Everybody in the cabinet felt that he was an alternative
governor, they felt that he was slowing the process,” he said.
Mr.
Amaechi said transparency in the use of public funds was key to his
administration as governor, and that the Rivers community was fully
briefed periodically on how funds were being utilised.
“Within
that period we insisted on engaging the indigenous communities on how
much we received and how we spent the money. That is why I feel that
after this ministerial appointment, I should do everything possible to
stay away from government because in spite of all the forms of
transparency I introduced in government, one man could begin to tell
lies to Nigerians and Nigerians believe him. The governor of Rivers
State said I squandered N3 trillion naira. I did not receive up to N1.8
trillion naira as governor both from IGR and funds from federal
allocation. So, how could I have squandered money I did not even receive
in the first place? You can see the politics of lies and lies. As
Minister of Transportation, I run an open and transparent system. I
believe in name and shame. What name and shame does is, if you name and
shame those of them who don’t have conscience they won’t come to public
functions. I do have conscience. In fact, it was the word corruption
that brought me to this occasion because I wanted to see who will get up
and say to me, ‘this is evidence that you are corrupt. We went to court
against the Rivers State government on their allegation of corruption
against me. The Court of Appeal said, produce that document that found
this man (Amaechi) guilty of those crimes and up till today he (Wike)
has not produced it,” he said
