Rivers crisis: Amaechi opens up on feud with First Lady In a no holds barred setting, Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State ,yesterday opened up on his long-running battle with the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan. He traced the feud to her visit to Okrika during which, he said, the First Lady publicly chided him. But he said he is ready for peace “if it is peace that everybody wants.” The governor spoke in Port Harcourt while receiving a delegation of Niger Delta Bishops who are trying to resolve the political crisis in the state. The Bishops had,visited Mrs.Jonathan last month, during which she stated her own case. She said on that occasion that she regarded the governor as her son and would not wish him evil. But the governor, responding on that point yesterday, said: “No mother takes away a police commissioner to the detriment of her son.So when next you see my mother (First Lady),please tell her she should try and protect her son.” It was a veiled reference to the role of the state Police Commissioner,Mr .Mbu Joseph Mbu,in the crisis.He has been accused by the governor and observers within and outside the state of taking sides with the forces against the governor,includ ing Mrs.Jonathan. The governor also spoke on his disagreement with his former aide and current Minister of state for Education,Mr.Ny esom Wike. The Bishops were led by the Rt. Rev. James Aye Oruwori. Following is the transcription of Amaechi’s speech at yesterday’s meeting as made available by his media team. “My Lords, I don’t know what to say, believe me.The only thing I want to say to you and I want to be put on record that the wife of the President said when my wife came to beg me, I pushed her away. “I have never quarrelled with my wife publicly, and I will never quarrel with my wife publicly. So there is no time I pushed my wife away, and there is no time I will push my wife away. “I just want to correct that so that nobody goes away with the impression that somebody told my wife: ‘go and talk to your husband.She came and I pushed her away’. No, that day I simply walked away into a bus and I sat down until they finished. “So, all I did was go back to the bus to enable my wife perform her official function as someone who had received the wife of the President and escort her to all the places she wanted to go to. “I hope that it (this mediation) will work. Niger Delta Monarchs came and no result came out of it and since you are men of God I hope that this one God will bless it. I hope so, because that is the same way I spoke to them (the monarchs) and they said, ‘watch out, it will work’, and they never returned because it never worked. “There are so many persons who had come to mediate but nothing came out of it. If it is peace that everybody wants, I am ready for peace. When you say you are seeking for permission, I am wondering why, because if you did not have the permission you would not have gone to see the wife of the President. “The mere fact that you have seen the wife of the President means that you have initiated the peace move, so you don’t require any further approval than the approval of God that you have started with. “There are aspects of the story that is public that I need to correct. Lord Bishops, please allow me correct those ones too because when you spoke with the wife of the President she spoke publicly. She said and I concede to her when she said she is my mother. “As wife of the President, who is the head of government and head of the nation, she is my mother and you expect that as my mother she should be able to protect her son. No mother takes away a Police Commissioner to the detriment of her son.So when next you see my mother, please tell her that she should try and protect her son. “The other aspect is the Okrika story when she visited. As I said, as the governor, by protocol I will receive the President and you know that the President is not just our President, he is the head of the nation but when the wife of the President came I went to receive her at the airport and she slept in Port Harcourt . “The next day she came up with a programme that was not part of the official programme, and what was the programme? She wanted her people to receive her in Okrika. There was no plan; there was no protocol arrangement, nothing. “We just had to quickly arrange protocol to take her to the place. But to do that we wanted to also show her, as part of her own programme, not our programme, was to show her the projects we had done in Okrika. So we took her to the Rufus Ada-George Ring road in Okrika which we started and completed and then somewhere we saw a health centre and a primary school and I said stop, let me show her this health centre. “We looked at the health centre and we were satisfied. At the primary school, there were houses around the primary school too close for comfort; no football field, no playground, no space at all around the school and I turned to the wife of the President and said ‘Your Excellency Ma, we have not finished with this building, we would buy the houses that are surrounding the primary school and demolish them’. “Once she heard the word ‘demolish’, the wife of the President flared up and took the microphone from me and started all sorts of diatribes that I won’t mention here for the respect I have for the office of the wife of the President. “When she finished, I felt that it is wrong to confront the wife of the President publicly. When she finished, I withdrew and walked into the bus. When we got to the ground of the reception which was not part of our programme, which she just included herself, I came down from the bus and went to sit in one of the primary schools. That is where she said my wife met me and I never and will never… How did the wife of the President know that my wife met me and I pushed her away when she was supposed to be in a public ceremony. Was she standing with me and my wife in that primary school and saw me push my wife away? “So it is important that you get to know this and it is important that the public knows that the altercation between myself and the wife of the President was as a result of providing services in her place, the Okrika people because you must deal with the issue of paedophiles. “If you build a primary school and the place is surrounded by people who are cooking and selling and buying, that is not a conducive atmosphere for learning and we did not say we would come there with caterpillars and demolish.We say we would buy the houses from the people and pay them off to be able to get a football field and provide playground for the children and fence off the school so that we can protect them from paedophiles.Tha t was what happened.” On the Minister of State for Education, Nyesom Wike, the governor said although he was under pressure from the President to drop him as a ministerial nominee, he refused. His words: “I heard you also visited Nyesom Wike. I try not to talk about Wike. I say so because he is my subordinate. I try not to talk about him but I heard you visited him. “Why I won’t talk about him is that Nyesom Wike, his second tenure as Obio Akpor Council Chairman was by the grace of God but I was the architect of that second term. Nyesom Wike was appointed Chief of Staff by me. Nyesom Wike as a Minister of State, I nominated him. “I was under pressure by the President to drop him, I refused. The President persuaded me to drop him and bring a woman but I refused. “ I heard he is going all over town saying I didn’t appoint him, I didn’t appoint him, the President appointed him but I nominated him to be a minister as the Chairman of Nigeria Governors’ Forum. I did but you know, character doesn’t come easily, character is a very difficult thing and I am a man of character.” Earlier, the leader of the delegation, the Rt. Rev. James Aye Oruwori said they were in Government House because they needed the governor’s permission to intervene in the prolonged crisis in the state and the dispute between the governor and the First Lady. He said they took the challenge to intervene in the crisis without external influence, having also visited First Lady to restore peace to the state. Bishop Oruwori said: “Our coming is not influenced by any person.Our coming is not sponsored by any person but because in a home where there are fathers, peace is always maintained and because we have observed that there have been some challenges to the people of Rivers State, then to the entire Nigeria, we feel agitated in our spirits. “It is not an exaggeration to say that we have been praying but then prayer without faith is classified as dead and it is on this note we have taken upon ourselves to make a move to seek for peace. “The scripture says precisely in Matthew 5:9 that ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they are the children of God”. “The best thing to do, we felt is to first of all come to you and to say we would want to intervene in this matter believing that there is nothing impossible with God. “We just feel that if this matter is allowed to escalate, the matter is something that will not affect only we that are living but even our children that will be born tomorrow”. During her own meeting with the Bishops last month,Mrs Jonathan had also admitted that the her feud with the governor started during her Okrika trip. She said: “This matter started as far back as four years ago at Anyugubiri in Okrika when I begged him not to demolish a part of Okrika but (that he should) dialogue first with the people. “After that incident, he called the chairman of Okrika (local government) and sacked him for holding a reception in our honour; that boy was the first victim. “He also put my people under curfew for nine months. I called him and pleaded with him but he refused. Then I began to hear all sorts of propaganda in the media against me; this is not the way. “I’ve never spoken about this issue but as men of God, I believe you’ll say the truth always because there are a lot of conflicting interests; some will hear one thing and say the exact opposite. “I also want you to know the genesis of this problem and pray that God touches Amaechi’s heart as per his hot temper because when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. “I appeal to Amaechi to sheathe his sword so that we can defend our state and this country with love, unity, patriotism and truth at all time. “Hebrews 12:14 urges us to embrace peace with all men without which; we cannot see God. “Amaechi is my son; I cannot fight him, and I cannot kill him. “He shouldn’t be used by outsiders against his own blood because this seat is vanity. One day, no matter how long it takes; we will leave this seat. Power is not forever. “This seat is vanity; others sat here and left .So one-day I’ll also leave, and we will meet at home; so why should I fight him?Let’s calm down, face issues, leave non-existent matters, stop magnifying lies and respect our leaders and people in authority. Let’s give peace a chance. # NATION
Posted on: Sat, 03 Aug 2013 09:11:25 +0000
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