EMBATTLED Rivers State Governo Rotimi Amaech on Thursday pooh-poohed alleged claims of his ambition to emerge
as a vice-president of Nigeria in the future, while adding that nobody had a right to bring down a state just because an ambition was alleged to exist as the case with the current crisis plaguing his state.
Amaechi, who spoke on BBC Hardtalk anchored by Shaun Ley in London, United Kingdom, however, denied reports that he described President Goodluck Jonathan as a dictator, saying what he told a Financial Times reporter in Port Harcourt, was that the president needed to check the people around him, who were abusing power.
The Amaechi interview on Hardtalk was recorded on Tuesday and aired on BBC World News as was monitored by sharpedgenews.com in Kansas City, United States on Thursday.
Amaechi refuted speculations that he was advised by the presidency and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), his party, to step down his ambition on the chairmanship of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) for his opponent, Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State, and that the NGF was striving to be independent from external forces. “Nobody has a right to bring down a state just because an ambition exists,” the governor said, decrying the crisis. First and foremost, it is important to state clearly that it is a bit too early for 2015.
Mr. President was elected to preside over the country and I support that. So, let everybody allow Mr. President to preside over the country for the interest of the country. Everybody should allow 2015 to be what it is- 2015.
“The point is that a transition is around the corner and politics is the greatest thing in Nigeria and so, a lot of people whose interest appears to be threatened have come out now to pursue their private- very private interest and as governor of Rivers State, my focus is not on that,” he said. On the allegation that he called the president a dictator, Amaechi who strongly denied the allegation, said the statement being referred to was made in Port Harcourt, when thugs were unleashed on some of the northern governors who had paid him a solidarity visit in the light of the crisis that engulfed the state House of Assembly a few days before the visit.
“I didn’t say the President; I said the people around him. There are people who are abusing power and there are those who have even compromised power. So, when the Financial Times reporter interviewed me in Port Harcourt, I made that point clearly.
That was the day some hoodlums were hired to stone some northern governors who visited me to show solidarity,” he told Ley. Amaechi, who spoke extensively on the NGF crisis, also denied reports that he was advised, both by the presidency and the PDP to let go of his ambition to re-contest the chairmanship of the NGF, insisting no such advice came from either of the quarters. “A lot of assumptions are being made here and there by different persons about what they think or what they assume my ambitions are. Nobody advised me not to run; there is no law that requires me to tell him (Jonathan) that I was going to run. I didn’t need to run to the president to say Mr. President I need to run for the chairmanship of the NGF.
I didn’t need to do that and I didn’t do that. “And he in turn did not call me to say don’t run, I heard you’re going to run. So I ran and I didn’t see the president on the ballot. The person I saw on the ballot was Jonah Jang,” he stated even as he reaffirmed on the programme that he defeated Jang by polling 19 votes to Jang’s 16 in the NGF chairmanship election.
Speaking on his suspension from the PDP and the fact that the Minister of State for Education, Nyesome Wike, was reported to have asked him to leave the PDP on the grounds of his alleged public attacks on the president, Amaechi retorted that nobody has the right to dictate to him what party to associate with, adding that no one can chase him out of the PDP.
“I am going nowhere. We’ll all be in the PDP,” he insisted. He, therefore, seized the opportunity to dispel speculations about his ambition, saying it begs logic to leave the PDP if indeed he has an ambition, especially that the president is assumed to be nursing a re-election bid, saying his continued stay in the party means he nurses no such ambition and that he would not allow any one frustrate him out of the PDP.