THE Rivers State Commissioner for Information and Communications, Joseph Johnson, says the two commissioners who resigned from the cabinet of Governor Siminalayi Fubara were lucky that the governor is a tolerant person.
He described the reasons adduced by the two commissioners for resigning as an afterthought, saying they ought not to have waited until their resignation on Wednesday to voice such opinions.
The PUNCH reports that Prof. Zaccaeus Adangor(SAN) and Isaac Kamalu resigned from Fubara’s cabinet on Wednesday.
Both are loyalists of ex-governor Nyesom Wike, who is currently embroiled in a political disagreement with Fubara, his estranged political godson.
Adangor and Kamala tendered their resignation about 24 hours after Fubara reshuffled his cabinet and moved them to other ministries.
Adangor, who was the Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice, was redeployed to the Ministry of Special Duties (Governor’s Office), while, Kamalu was removed as Commissioner for Finance and moved to the Ministry of Employment Generation and Economic Empowerment.
While Adangor accused Governor Siminalayi Fubara of ‘willful interference’ in his duties as justice commissioner, Kamalu faulted Fubara’s claims of N27bn monthly Internally Generated Revenue rise and expressed his unwillingness to work in an atmosphere of acrimony and bitterness.
But reacting on Thursday, the information commissioner wondered why they both waited until resignation to realise the accusations they levelled against the governor.
Speaking to The PUNCH, Johnson said, “Well, it was good that they took the path of honour to do the needful. They are lucky that they have a governor who has a calm spirit, somebody who can tolerate even what the least person on earth cannot take.
“So it is funny that only today the former justice commissioner could open his mouth to say that the governor was interfering. He didn’t know that a manager gets his job done through others.
“The job I’m doing is the governor’s job, he merely appointed me. The governor is the chief executive officer. It means that all of us are doing one assignment or the other for him. The day he no longer wants you, he says ‘Joe Johnson, please go’.
“Now, there is what they call infra dignitatem in law, it is a Latin word. It means acting beneath dignity. The Attorney-General should have resigned if he saw any interference. But he kept quiet until he was reassigned; he then realised that his job was being interfered with. Who owns the job?”
Speaking further, he said, “The job he has left belongs to the governor. He can decide to function without an attorney-general. So when you are doing a job, when you are a paid employee, you do not know that your employer is the owner of the job? He can fire or hire you.
“So I want to believe that all those things were an afterthought. If he ever resigned three weeks before now or whenever he discovered that there was an infringement on his job, then one will know that he is a man of honour.
“But to wait till he was reassigned only for him to now realise that his job was being interfered with, well, I leave that to history, because he has gone and I doubt if there will be an opportunity for him to return. Although I can’t rule out anything, because they had resigned before and returned. But I want to believe this must be the end of it.”
Speaking on Kamalu, Johnson said it was unfortunate that the former commissioner was part of the system but did not raise any objection to the rise in revenue which the governor disclosed recently, only for him to speak after he was reassigned.
“He (Kamalu) knows that the man that is seated as the governor now has passed through the ranks and reached the level of the Accountant-General of the state. And he is not a man of perfidy. He is not a man who is loquacious. He is a man whose word is like bankers’ cheque.
“So if he says this is where we are now, it gives a clear indication that there is an insight as to what we are doing. We have awarded N80bn contract and we didn’t borrow a dime.
“We said it was savings from our internally generated revenue. We paid civil servants their promotion and we paid N100,000 across the board to over 50,000 civil servants as a Christmas bonus and we are doing projects.”
Johnson said picking holes in the IGR by Kamalu was tantamount to ‘giving a dog a bad name in order to hang it’.
He added, “He was part of the regime until only last night. There is what they call concealment in law. If he kept quiet all the time, all the weeks that the public accounts committee came to see the governor and he made that assertion, why didn’t he raise an objection? He didn’t raise any objection, only now that the cookies have crumbled he is speaking.
“But what we are doing is an indication that the governor is honest, to the extent that he can say ‘look, our IGR has risen. We are no longer borrowing money to do anything. We will pay upfront, 50 per cent and we have shown in some of the projects awarded’.
“We are doing things without borrowing any money and we have some financial buoyancy to the extent that new projects are coming up, internal roads are ongoing, agro-chain are ongoing. So what are we saying? He is a talk-and-do governor. It is action and fewer words!”(Punch)
