RIVERS State Governor Chibuike Amaechi has
said that he desires peace with President Goodluck Jonathan and his
wife, Patience, irrespective of their perceived misunderstanding.
Amaechi said
his misunderstanding with the First Lady arose out of his desire to
provide a conducive learning environment for the children of Okrika, her
hometown.
The governor stated this when clergymen of the Niger
Delta Bishops’ Forum visited him in Government House, Port Harcourt
Friday as part of their efforts to mediate the political crisis in the
state.
Amaechi, who is also Chairman of Nigeria Governors’ Forum
(NGF), however, said he has enormous respect for both President Goodluck
Jonathan and his wife.
The bishops had some weeks ago visited the
First Lady and Minister of State for Education, Nyesom Wike, in Abuja
as part of their efforts to resolve the issues
Amaechi said: “My
lords, I don’t know what to say. Believe me, the only thing I want to
say to you is that, and I want to be put on record, 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,’ and 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 of someone who had received
the wife of the President and escort her to all the places she wanted
to go to.”
He continued: “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.”
The governor also said: “When you spoke with the wife of the President
she spoke publicly, and I concede to her, that 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.”
On the Okrika story, he explained: “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, which was for her people to receive her in Okrika,
there was no plan, 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, 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 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.
“I felt 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, 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.”
He
continued: “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 the public know that the
altercation between myself and the wife of the President was as a result
of providing services to her place, the Okrika people.
“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 said 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
pedophiles.”
Regarding the Minister of State for Education, Nyesom
Wike, whom he nominated for appointment as minister, Amaechi stated: “I
hear you also visited Wike. I try not to talk about Wike. I say so
because he is my subordinate.
“Why I won’t talk about him is
that Wike, his second tenure as Obio Akpor Council Chairman was by the
grace of God, but I was the architect of that second term.
“He
was appointed Chief of Staff by me and I nominated him as minister. I
was under pressure by the President to drop him and bring a woman, but I
refused.
“I hear he is going all over town saying I didn’t
appoint him; that the President appointed him. But I nominated him to be
a minister, as the Chairman of NGF.”
Earlier, the leader of the
delegation, Rt. Rev. James Aye Oruwori, said they came because they
needed the governor’s permission to intervene in the prolonged crisis in
the state and the dispute between him and the First Lady.
They
said they took the challenge to intervene in the crisis without,
external influence, having also visited First Lady, to restore the peace
that existed in the state.
Oruwori said: “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 it upon
ourselves to make a move to seek for peace.
“The best thing to
do, we felt, is to first of all come to you and 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 also our children that will be born tomorrow.”
Source: Guardian
