Minister
of Transportation, Chibuike Amaechi, has denied allegations that he embezzled
money meant for the development of Rivers state when he was governor. Amaechi
said this while speaking at a stakeholders’ forum on corruption organized by
the Federal Ministry of Justice in Abuja today July 28th.
“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 utilized.
“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.
