THERE was mild drama, on Wednesday, at the plenary in the Senate between members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and those of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from Rivers State, when one of the Rivers PDP senators was about submitting a written petition against the nomination of the former Rivers State governor, Rotimi Amaechi, as minister.
As Senator George Sekibo, representing Rivers East senatorial district, raised a point of order for him to have the opportunity to submit the petition, senators who are APC members almost shouted him down.
Despite the opposition from the APC members at the Senate, the Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki, allowed Sekibo to submit the petition, which was later referred to the Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions.
Senator Sekibo later informed newsmen at the National Assembly that “there is the group that is called the Integrity Group and they believe in transparency and fighting against corruption. They believe in good governance and effective utilisation of every fund that is allocated to any state government.
“They are based in Port Harcourt. They went into a research and discovered that over N70 billion were transferred from hard currency account to places outside the country.”
The petition, he stated, had been written to Mr President, adding that “if President Muhammadu Buhari has read it, he may not hurriedly nominate Amaechi to be a minister.
“Amaechi is qualified to be a minister, but when issues of corruption and fraud are openly x-rayed by people, it is necessary for Mr President to take a critical look and examine the allegations, whether they are true or not. Mr President is preaching about corruption, we applaud him for that.
“If you are fighting against corruption, then there must not be no sacred cow. No matter how close such a person is to you, if there are allegations about him, you must spend time to critically look at them.
“I am informed that this petition was forwarded to the EFCC a month or two ago and I am also informed that the EFCC is also commencing its investigation.
“We are not stopping Mr President from appointing a Rivers man to be a minister; we will welcome it. There are many APC members who were not indicted or accused of such similar issues.
“Maybe the letters that were sent to the Presidency were not delivered. We are sure that through this process, he would be able to hear some of the allegations in the petition and, perhaps, have a re-think, The Rivers people will be very happy. We are not victimising anybody. We will not kick against any other nominee from Rivers State apart from Amaechi, who had been so indicted.”
Sekibo said the petition was submitted on behalf of senators from Rivers State, adding that the one sent to the president was a documentary of how proceeds from Rivers State government-owned account were disbursed from one source to another.
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