The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State has come down hard on those alleging that the State Governor, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, is the one funding the party at the national level, and those criticising him for the purported funding.

“This is a rumour without foundation and a figment of the imagination of those who invented it. It is based on mere suspicion because of the key role that Governor Amaechi has been playing in repositioning APC to salvage Nigeria from the savage grip of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). As rightly stated by Gov. Amaechi on Monday during the APC Port Harcourt flag-off rally, APC is a very big party to be funded from the purse of the Rivers State Government,” Rivers APC Chairman, Dr. Davies Ibiamu Ikanya, said.

Ikanya, who spoke via a statement issued this morning in Port Harcourt, observed that Rivers State does not have the kind of money people behind the satanic rumour attribute to it. “Rivers is not the richest state in either the country or the APC. It is not, for example, anywhere as rich as Lagos, which is an APC state and very much committed to the progress of the party. The truth is that no single State or individual is funding APC; the party is funded by all its committed members,” the State Party Chairman said.

He claimed that “even much of the money which people believe that the Rivers State Government has had since been taken away by the hostile PDP-controlled Federal Government through a combination of declining Federal allocation and the ceding of some of our oil wells to the neighbouring Abia and President Goodluck Jonathan’s home state, Bayelsa.”

According to Ikanya, “That Rivers State has witnessed unprecedented development in the past seven years is not because of having too much money but rather because of the ingenuity of the Amaechi-led administration. We therefore plead with the idle minds spreading this unholy rumour of his funding APC with Rivers State money to find something better to do with their time.”

Rivers APC congratulated Gov. Amaechi “for putting smiles on the faces of civil servants in the State by paying their December salary before Christmas, thereby shaming detractors who thought that he would not be able to pay due to the economic emasculation of the state by the PDP-led federal Government.”

•Photo shows Ikanya.

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