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| All Progressives Congress |
By Nwaorgu Faustinus
Last
Monday, the former Director General of Nigerian Maritime Administration and
Safety Agency (NIMASA) accused Gov Nyesom Wike of Rivers State of cornering ‘no
fewer than 400 houses for himself and his cronies’ describing the development
as “ridiculous and undignified.” Peterside further accused the
governor of displaying an obscene and insatiable appetite for criminal
accumulation of properties with reckless abandon despite being a serving
governor.
No sooner Dr. Peterside
dropped the bombshell than the governor responded with his usual caustic and
vitriolic insults through the Rivers State Commissioner for Information, Mr.
Paulinus Nsirim. In the confusion and frenzy to explain away why
civil servants have been thrown out of their lawful abodes in Government
Reservation Areas (GRAs), the governor confessed to seizing those buildings but
re-allocating same to those the governor called ‘competent private
individuals.’ The statement read in part, "We want to state again
categorically, that the Rivers State Executive Council took the decision to
recover dilapidated government quarters from civil servants and illegal
occupants within Old and New Government Residential Area (GRA), Port Harcourt
and reallocate them to competent private individuals."
It is said that there is
never a perfect crime. Therefore, it was not surprising that the governor
indicted himself by confessing to the accusation howbeit unwittingly.
Ever since the governor
responded to Dr. Dakuku Peterside through Nsirim, many questions are being
asked and no answers seem available. For example, how were ‘qualified private
individuals’ determined? Who are those considered qualified? Did the Rivers
State Government, by any means, prequalify Rivers indigenes before
re-allocating those buildings? When and where was the process carried out?
These and more are the questions the governor must answer. The APC will not be
surprised if the governor is unable to provide the right answers.
The truth is that Gov
Wike is guilty of the accusation leveled against him by Dr. Peterside. The
governor’s landed acquisitions are known to everyone in Rivers State and even
beyond. The APC will soon publish a full dossier of Gov Wike’s landed
properties (many acquired through proxies, some bought, sold and bought again
through a myriad of fronts, etc.).
The APC is aware that
with the difficulties erected by the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit
(NFIU) / Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the notorious past
time by corrupt governors and government officials to launder money overseas
has become even more difficult for the likes of Gov Wike hence the emergence of
the ‘unknown investor’ buying up anything and everything in sight in Port
Harcourt and Rivers State, sometimes through threat and intimidation of
rightful owners.
But most worrisome and
dangerous is the fear by many that the evictions whether of civil servants in
the reservation areas or the waterfronts is a carefully planned agenda to alter
the ethnic demographics of Port Harcourt for a purpose because of the pattern
of re-allocation of those properties after the governor has personally picked
the choicest for himself.
The All Progressives
Congress (APC) urges Rivers people to arm themselves with their Permanent
Voters Card (PVC) to liberate themselves one year from now.
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