The Minister of Transportation and Director-General of the President Buhari 2019 Campaign Organisation, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, has accused the Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, and the representative of Rivers South-East Senatorial District, Magnus Abe, of conniving and conspiring to disparage and defame him.
While Wike is of the Peoples Democratic Party, Abe and Amaechi belong to the All Progressives Congress.
Amaechi, the immediate past governor of Rivers State and the leader of the APC in the state and the South South, made the claim on Friday in a statement by his Media Office.
He said Abe and Wike “are plotting to use his former cabinet members to tell fake, concocted and distorted stories to the media that are meant to denigrate him, impugn his unblemished integrity and paint a very terrible image of him to members of the public.”
He claimed that the plot is already far-gone and persons are being coached on what to say and how to say it.
The statement read: “I am aware that two former commissioners who served in the State Executive Council when I was governor have been procured by Wike and Abe, jointly and collaboratively, to carry out this hatchet job of ‘hack Amaechi down’ campaign. The plan is to throw as much dirt at me as possible and rubbish my image.
“While one is being coached in Rivers State Government House of what to say to the press and how to say it, to do maximum damage; the other one is busy distorting, concocting and fabricating fake screenshots, text messages, documents and all sorts in Senator Abe’s Freedom House campaign office in Port Harcourt; that they intend to release to the media to tarnish my image.
“I want to alert the media and members of the public of the smear plot by these two political collaborators (Wike and Abe), to unjustly discredit and smear me for their selfish political reasons.”
He insisted that no amount of sabotage and fake stories will deter him and all genuine APC members, supporters and Rivers State people from “changing and voting out the inept government in Rivers State, next year.”
But Wike, reacting through the Rivers State Commissioner for Information and Communications, Chief Emma Okah, said: “The assertion (by Amaechi) is false.
“Governor Wike has no time to take issues with paper tigers and base politicians, who cannot win elections in their wards and local governments, without the help of security agencies.
“Senator Abe is an adult and a distinguished member of the National Assembly, who does not need any collaboration to resist the wrong visited upon him by the former governor of Rivers State, by denying him right to political aspiration.
“Every Nigerian knows the love lost between Governor Nyesom Ezenwo Wike and the Transportation Minister and since 2013.
“The latter has used every opportunity to insult the governor of Rivers State and his government and he sees nothing wrong with that. Why is the transportation minister now afraid of receiving a little of the same meal he has served others?
“While the transportation minister is diverting attention from the obvious questions of his failure to attract any project to Rivers State, despite the enormous sacrifice the state made in bringing about the APC-led government at the centre, the government and people of Rivers State will remain focused in demanding explanations on the economic rape he (Amaechi) inflicted on the state and the failure of his party to plant any project in the state.”
