Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi
Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State has said President Goodluck Jonathan “is supervising a highly corrupt government.”
He also claimed that “there is no democracy yet in Nigeria.”
The governor, who spoke in Abuja on
Saturday, insisted that he had no personal quarrel with President
Jonathan, adding that if governance could be separated from the
President, he (Jonathan) “remains a good man.”
He, however, regretted that the President “is supervising a highly corrupt government.”
He described the form of government being practised in Nigeria today as diarchy.
While reacting to the invasion of the National Assembly by the police on Thursday, Amaechi described the action as uncivilised.
He said the actions of the police in
recent times had shown that they had been pocketed by the Presidency and
the ruling Peoples Democratic Party.
He said, “We don’t have democracy in
Nigeria yet. What we have is diarchy. We don’t have a democracy. Diarchy
is dictatorship. The Federal Government has appropriated the police as
its personal property. The FG has taken over the police. See the way the
police took over the National Assembly. By law, the police have no
power to invade the National Assembly and they have no power to stop the
Speaker from going in or out of the National Assembly complex. But they
don’t obey law.”
He insisted that his party, the All
Progressives Congress, would not go to court if the PDP decided to rig
the 2015 presidential elections.
Instead of going to court, he said the APC would form a parallel government.
He said, “What is the essence of going
to court when the Federal Government don’t obey the law. That’s why the
APC say we won’t go to the court any longer. If you rig us out, we would
rig ourselves in; which means if you think you can rig us out in 2015,
we will form our own government. We have met on that and we have agreed
on that. We will instal our own government and there would be two
governments.
“The only way to avoid a parallel
government is to have a free and fair election. You can’t continue to
use the police as if it is a private agency or company of the
government.”
While saying that the Police in South
Africa is currently investigating President Jacob Zuma, he wondered if
the police in Nigeria would be allowed to play such a role in the
country.
“Are you aware that the President of the
South Africa is being probed by the police? Can that happen here? In
this country, they slap judges. Seven members of a state (Ekiti) House
of Assembly claimed they have sacked a Speaker,” he added.
On Boko Haram, the governor said it
would be difficult to convince Nigerians that the Federal Government was
not deliberately allowing the crisis to continue in order for it to
decimate the votes that would come from the North-East in 2015.
The zone is considered to be a stronghold of the APC.
Amaechi said Nigerians knew the
capability of their soldiers, who he said went to Liberia and liberated
the country from the hands of the rebels only for them to be having
problems dislodging a rag-tag army of insurgents in the country.
He said, “The Federal Government
deliberately allowed the Boko Haram to overrun many villages in the
North-East. If it is not a political agenda, why would the military not
be able to chase away the rag-tag army of Boko Haram?
“They don’t want elections to hold in
the zone so that there wouldn’t be election in the zone. If there is no
election in the North-East, they believe that the APC would lose.
“If they are not afraid of the APC, let
them restore law and order. The zone is in the hands of the APC. Borno,
Bauchi, Gombe, Adamawa and Yobe states are all APC states. The only
state where it could be 50:50 is maybe Taraba State. Apart from this,
other states in the zone have always voted for Maj.Gen. Muhammadu
Buhari, one of our presidential hopefuls.”
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