development of Rivers state when he was governor.
Amaechi said this while speaking at a stakeholders’ forum
on corruption organised 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 utilised.
“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
