The Rivers State Government on Thursday, January 28, 2016 called on the Minister for Transport, Mr Chibuike Amaechi to account for about N3 trillion received during his eight-year tenure as the governor of the oil-rich state.
This disclosure was made by the state’s Commissioner for Information, Dr. Austin Tam-George in a press briefing in the state’s capital of Port Harcourt. He said that Rivers was reeling from “the catastrophic legacy of the former governor” despite receiving over three trillion naira in revenue in 8 years.
“Amaechi left the most abandoned projects in the history of Rivers State since 1997. Thousands of workers were without their salaries for four months and thousands of teachers were not paid for nearly 12 months.
“We have so many abandoned projects which huge sums have been paid but projects are yet to be completed.
“We have the Mono-rail project that gulped over N60bn and it was abandoned. We have the Woji road project awarded at N3bn. There was a variation of the project to the upward of N14bn but it was abandoned. We inherited the project and completed it.
“There are so many of the abandoned projects. We have the Karibi George 250 bed project where huge sums of money were paid but no single block was laid at the site,” he said.
Tam George revealed that the state government was committed to deploying every legitimate means to compel those that looted the treasury to face the full wrath of law.
Rotimi Amaechi was indicted by a judicial panel of enquiry in October 2015. The panel’s White Paper revealed corruption to the scale of N96 billion covering several dubious transactions with cronies by the former governor.
