The Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, has denied allegations of corruption against him, saying he actually fought graft to a standstill throughout the 8 years he spent as Rivers state governor.
He said he was transparent and did not embezzle money meant for the people.
He denied receiving over N3.1 trillion naira as alleged by his successor, Nyesom Wike.
Speaking at a stakeholders’ forum on corruption organised by the Federal Ministry of Justice in Abuja, Thursday, Amaechi said Rivers State became the first to implement the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) act in Nigeria during his tenure.
“If you had followed the Rivers State government when I was governor, we were the first state to introduce the Public Procurement Law in the country. The state cabinet used to call the Director General of Public Procurement in the state as an alternative governor, that they wanted an amendment to that law. The reason they wanted amendment is that he (DG) refused to increase the threshold to one hundred million naira, per ministry, instead he reduced it to 10 million naira.”
“I had a battle with him (DG BPE) and the world bank who insisted that we should not go for an amendment but should persuade him to increase the threshold. I remember the cabinet tried to go to court against him and I remember that he was also trying to go to court against Commissioners.
In fact, the procurement DG wrote a memo that I felt was very incriminating requesting that since the law requires the governor to take any commissioner who doesn’t comply with the public procurement law to court, I should please take the commissioner of education to court for not complying… Everybody in the cabinet felt that he was an alternative governor, they felt that he was slowing the process,” he said.
Amaechi said transparency in the use of public funds was key to his administration as governor, and that the Rivers communities was fully briefed periodically on how funds were being utilised.
“Within that period we insisted on engaging the indigenous communities on how much we received and how we spent the money. That is why I feel that after this ministerial appointment, I should do everything possible to stay away from government because in spite of all the forms of transparency I introduced in government, one man could begin to tell lies to Nigerians and Nigerians believe him.
“The governor of Rivers State said I squandered N3 trillion naira. I did not receive up to N1.8 trillion naira as governor both from IGR and funds from federal allocation.
So, how could I have squandered money I did not even receive in the first place? You can see the politics of lies and lies,” he said.
“As Minister of Transportation, I run an open and transparent system. I believe in name and shame. What name and shame does is, if you name and shame those of them who don’t have conscience they won’t come to public functions. I do have conscience. In fact, it was the word corruption that brought me to this occasion because I wanted to see who will get up and say to me, ‘this is evidence that you are corrupt.’
“We went to court against the Rivers State government on their allegation of corruption against me. The Court of Appeal said, produce that document that found this man (Amaechi) guilty of those crimes and up till today he (Wike) has not produced it,” Mr. Amaechi said.
He urged the audience to draw closer to government, pay more attention and engage political appointees to an open government. “Please come to all of us in government, all the ministers in government and engage us on open government. For me, for ministry of transportation any information you want please write to us we will not only give you, we will give you on time. This is because all of us that have become ministers have been entrusted by the President. His first policy is corruption; the second one is economic development. We have been appointed by the President to go and do those following things to ensure that there is fund that we save from the people’s money to develop the community and the community we have is the Nigerian community.
“Indeed you are our leaders, we are here by the grace of God and by your grace and we believe that you have the right to ask questions. We believe that you have the right to demand accountability from ministers. We believe that nobody has the right to rise from just being an ordinary graduate of a university by courtesy of holding public office, he now owns mansions, cars…” Amaechi said.
