Dear Friends, Fans, and the People of Rivers State,
Last week, the Rivers State Government issued a decisive press statement challenging Mr. Rotimi Amaechi to a public debate on his disastrous legacy as a two-term governor of the State.
Despite receiving over three trillion Naira in revenue in eight years, the Amaechi administration left the most abandoned projects in the history of Rivers State, since 1967.
But Mr. Amaechi and the Rivers State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) are slyly avoiding that challenge.
They prefer to keep the focus on the endless and meaningless quibbles over the recent rerun legislative elections, which they they lost embarrassingly, and are desperate to see annulled altogether.
But the debate is on a critical matter of governance and public accountability. And governance is the APC’s weakest point, while it is the greatest strength of Nyesom Wike administration.
In Rivers State, Governor Wike is roaringly popular because he has taken governance to the streets. He is delivering service to the people, and is touching lives in a direct, practical and non-abstract way.
It is hard to imagine a more wasteful and visionless government than that of Rotimi Amaechi in Rivers State.
His monorail project stands in all its mammoth ugliness along Azikiwe Road, Port Harcourt. It is uncompleted and totally unviable. That is 45 billion Naira down the drain.
The APC is desperately avoiding a focus on Governor Wike’s sterling performance, because it stands in sharp contrast to Rotimi Amaechi’s catastrophic legacy.
We must not let the APC avoid this critical debate on good governance in Rivers State.
Therefore, to control the narrative, I suggest that we start a hashtag campaign to pressure Mr. Rotimi Amaechi and the APC to accept the challenge of a public debate on service delivery.
I also suggest that we begin an “AMAECHI DEBATE METER”, in order to track the number days or weeks it takes Mr. Amaechi and the APC to respond to this critically important debate on good governance in Rivers State.
We must move the discussion beyond the noisy and depressing plasticity of the APC propaganda in Rivers State.
Politics is about service. And Governor Wike is serving the people.
Let’s have the debate, please.
Dr. Austin Tam-George
Commissioner for Information and Communication
Rivers State
