ONYEDI GABRIEL, Port Harcourt
A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress in Rivers State, Chief Chukwuemeka Eze, has lambasted the Peoples Democratic Party for calling for the removal of the Transport Minister, Rotimi Amaechi, over alleged unremitted N165bn operating surplus in the Nigerian Port Authority.
Eze further derided the PDP for its failed attempts to link Mrs Amaechi to contract racketeering at the Niger Delta Develelopment Commission.
The party chief in a statement in Port Harcourt, on Thursday said the PDP lacked the moral rectitude to accuse anyone of corruption saying the party was disgraced out of power on grounds of incompetence, mismanagement of the commonwealth and general misadministration for 16 years.
He said the PDP for 16 years adopted a corrupt governance model that successfully sailed the country into the gapping abyss of depravity with a shattered economy and forced the people into varying degrees of abysmal living condition.
Eze asked the PDP to keep quiet and allow responsible individuals and organisations make comments on critical issues.
He recalled how the country was sucked dry and the common patrimony looted without hints of remorse during the period the party steered the statecraft, stressing that the current APC administration was laboring to cleanse the stubborn stains splashed on the image of the country before the global community.
Eze quarried the number of times the then PDP-led Federal Government summoned courage to expose and beamed its torchlight on the corruption that characterised its 16 years of governance.
He said only a serious government committed to crushing corruption could summon the courage to expose alleged corrupt practices involving its officials and order an investigation.
He told the PDP that Amaechi was always ready to answer with verifiable records questions sought in the course of the investigation.
Eze said the minister refused to make nominations into panel but asked the Head of Service to make the appointments, even when President Muhammadu Buhari gave him the opportunity to constitute the panel.
He described the PDP as a busybody with a grossly deficit understanding of the overt and covert efforts of Amarchi in ensuring that the infrastructural revolution of the Buhari and the APC government was effectively implemented to guarantee jobs and evoke economic fillip to the benefits of everybody.
He said: “Despite the monumental oil wealths the country reaped between 1999 and 2015, when Nigeria was still gasping for breath under the firm grip of the PDP the country was worst than the Abacha years, with decayed infrastructure, decrepit power supply, bloated government red tapes and bureaucracy, corruption, nepotism among others.
“Without the intervention of progressives like Buhari, Amaechi and others, the country would have been consigned to history because then, the clouds gathered and the atmosphere was pregnant and ready to be delivered of economic, social and ethnic crisis capable of culminating the biggest black nation called Nigeria.
“The N165bn allegedly swindled at NPA is being investigated and that exercise is the brainchild of the Transportation Minister whose stance against corruption is anchored on godly filial piety, love for humanity and crave for societal development.
“The latest onslaught launched against Amaechi is part of contrived schemes by the opposition party to fight back at the former Rivers Governor for his roles in severing the country from the firm and corrupt claws of the former ruling PDP during the 2015 elections.
“The fight to link Amaechi to corruption has been on since he left office as Rivers Governor, but all the devices adopted by the opposition since 2015 have not succeeded. They will not see the light of day because the minister abhors and in fact, has continued to maintain a bold stance against corruption in public service since his days as Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly.
“Nigerians should not to be dismayed or write-off the APC, forgetting the great feats it has achieved for the country under the Buhari administration especially, in the areas of infrastructure, housing, human capital development, job creation among others”.