Rivers State Governor, Chief Nyesom Wike, was today told to resign before he completely grounds the state. The State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) made the demand while reacting to the sacking, last week Wednesday by Wike, of four Commissioners and the suspension of the State Head of Service and Special Adviser on Lands for three months. This was followed the next day by the dismissal of Local Government Stole Administrators in the state.
Rivers APC in a statement signed by the State Chairman, Dr. Davies Ibiamu Ikanya, accused Wike of playing to the gallery and likened him to a bad workman who quarrels with his tools. The party said in the statement issued in the state capital, Port Harcourt:
“We are not bothered if Wike decides to sack all his commissioners since they, just like him, are a bunch of failures. The plot of Chief Wike from the beginning has been to turn himself to an Emperor in a democratic dispensation. The sacking, without giving any reason, of his Commissioners and dissolving his illegal Local Government Sole Administrators exemplifies this vision.”
The statement called on Wike “to take the honourable path by apologising and resigning now that it is obvious that his dreamy empire is gradually crumbling like a pack of cards and in view of the dangers his misguided vision has caused Rivers State, his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the entire Nigerian Nation.”
Insisting that Wike bulldozed his way into the Government House even though unprepared for governance, Rivers APC said that he must go for the following reasons:
1. Claiming and re-commissioning of roads and projects successfully executed by his predecessor, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi.
2. Destruction of the education sector by stopping the scholarship and free education scheme put up by the Amaechi administration to make Rivers State a reference point in Africa, and turning the model educational and health facilities put up in all the local government areas of the state to forests and dens of cultists by not using them and refusing to pay the salaries of the 13,000 teachers employed by the administration of Amaechi.
3. Destroying the security appliances and strategy put up by Amaechi to make the state crime-free and instead turning the state into a Rivers of blood and appointing suspected fellows with criminal records into his administration without due clearance by the security agencies, thereby causing capital flight and mass exodus of people and corporate bodies from Rivers State.
4. Running the state as a fiefdom without recourse to democratic principles and bankrupting the state in just over a year in power while also sinking it into monumental debt that will require generation to clear.
Concluding, Rivers APC said: “The evidence clearly shows that Wike is a terrible disappointment to both Rivers State and Nigeria. He has taken incompetence in governance to a new height in Nigeria, turning Rivers State to a Rivers of blood where human lives no longer worth much and where kidnapping, assassination and robbery have become the norms. Wike must go in the interest of the peace and progress of Rivers State.”
•Photo shows Governor Wike.
