BY CLIFFORD NDUJIHE, DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR

Penultimate Tuesday, Rivers State Governor, Rt. Hon Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi took the battle to retain his seat to Okrika, the homestead of his main opponent, Dr. Abiye Sekibo of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN. He spoke to reporters after the rally on why he is seeking re-election, his fears for the April polls and how to make the elections credible. Excerpts:

Rotimi Amaechi

Ahead of the polls, are you satisfied with the preparations of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC?

I am not in a position to tell you whether they are prepared or not. But do I have confidence in INEC? Yes! Will votes count? It will be dependent not on INEC but on the people. During my campaigns, I always tell people: when you vote, sit down there. When they finish counting, upload it in public glare so nobody will rig.

Rigging happens when people go home after voting. But if all of us finish voting and stay there, they will announce the result. If they say they are going to the local government, we will say we are following you and watch them hand over the results.

It happened under Babangida. How suddenly did we lose that? Even before the June 12, 1993 presidential election, immediately you pick the electoral materials everybody is following you. That time, there was no GSM and internet here but everybody knows the result.

They will follow you to the Local Government headquarters; you announce the result, they will follow you to the state. That was why then we did not have massive rigging we are having now. It was under Abacha’s transition programme that people started rigging in a such a manner that it became embarrassing to the country.

As far as INEC is concerned, I think they are prepared for free and fair election but the people have their own role to play. I am preaching: ‘Don’t allow them rig us out. Vote, wait until they announce the result. When they announce the result follow it until the next turn and don’t go until they announce the next one.’ If we all do that throughout the country, there will be no rigging.

Don’t you entertain any fears about the polls?

I have always talked about complacency especially for my own election. They say ‘he is popular. The governor has done well, everybody likes him. My vote doesn’t matter, so let me sleep.’ If out of 2.4 million voters, 1.3 million do that and other 1.1 million vote for the other party, you can never say what would happen. So, what we are doing is telling people: come out and vote.

The second fear is the fact that some people still have doubt that votes won’t count. There are those who say ‘there will be too much insecurity, don’t go and lose your life.’ That is why I say the government has a responsibility to secure everybody’s life.

There is a difference between Governor Amaechi and candidate Amaechi. Candidate Amaechi will be running the election, Governor Amaechi will still govern the state until May 29. Therefore, Governor Amaechi has a responsibility to ensure that lives and property are protected. So go out and vote, be rest assured of the protection of security agencies.

Across board what are the chances of your party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP at the polls?

I am not in a position to make that assessment. The only thing I can say is I doubt if any of the parties can match PDP. Are we going to lose ground? Only the governors can say what the situation looks like in their states. In Rivers State, we will do everything possible to mobilise the electorate to come out and vote.

By the grace of God, we will not lose ground in Rivers State. President Goodluck Jonathan will have nearly 100 per cent in Rivers State.  I hope we will not lose ground in other states.

At the rally in Okrika, you said it was payback time for Okrika people. Could you clarify that statement?
I left University in 1987. By 1988, I started working with Chief Rufus Ada George and Dr. Peter Odili. Chief Ada-George was an aspirant in our camp running for governorship. Sergeant Awuse was an aspirant in the SDP and because Ada-George was from Okrika, my people felt that it was wrong for any Ikwere man to support an Okrika man But I dared it and supported an Okrika man and Chief Ada-George became governor.

One day, we went to elect officers of the party at the LGA level and I dared contest for secretaryship. They could not take that. When I arrived for the election, they began to beat me. I was admitted at a clinic. The following week, the election was on, I came, ran and won. So, that was one vote for Chief Ada-George because the secretary was an automatic delegate to the governorship primary.

They were surprised that I came after they beat me up the previous week. So, that is what I mean by pay back time. If I supported your son to be governor, it is your turn to support me and this time there will be no violence, nobody is beating them for supporting me.

Apart from supporting their son to be governor in the past, what have you done for Okrika since you assumed power?

You heard me speak, when I said let their son come and stand and tell us what he had done for Okrika. Their son was SSG and a minister. I say to people that today, I have done just two raods in my local government area as governor.

The second one is I am rebuilding the road in my village. The rest roads were done when I was a speaker. So as SSG, why didn’t he attract those things to his community? The Ring Road we drove on was built by this government.

How do you see the challenge and opposition from that area?

Their son was launching a campaign in Port Harcourt. You would expect that by the time we arrived Okrika we would not see the kind of crowd that we met on ground. The fact that we saw that kind of crowd was a surprise to me. It was courageous that we hired NTA and AIT to show it live.

Were you actually expecting such a crowd?
Yes. You listened to them now. Was I the one that was saying they lost so many persons, there was no security in the past, etc? Okrika was a war zone. Chiefs were flogged, bishops were…I don’t want to go into the details. You better ask them.

It was when I came that I imposed a curfew, chased away the criminals that they had trained and kept in the place, and went after their guns that they were liberated. You can ask them. You heard them speak, one after the other.

You heard the woman, who said they found it difficult going to ease themselves because of fear of being attacked. At the rally, a female member of the House of Assembly said she was disaffected in the PDP but would not leave the party.

What have you done to reconcile aggrieved members of the PDP?

The only member who was disaffected that we have not reconciled with is the former minister of Transport, Abiye Sekibo. Chief Austin Opara is still with us, he is the chairman of the reconciliation committee.

At a press conference in Lagos, Sekibo alleged that your government frittered away N980 billion of the state in three years…

You should ask him whether it was frittering away Eleme Junction that used to keep people lying down there till 3.a.m everyday for N7 billion or the mono-rail that is going under N49 billion or the secondary schools that we are building -now it is N4.5 billion because we are increasing the capacity to 1000 students?

We are building 24 of such schools and if I win a second term, I will build another 24 to make them 48. Anybody who sees it will say ‘Oh, you can turn it into a university, Polytechnic, etc. I just showed a bank how our university is going to look like. They are doing the infrastructure work -water, roads, electricity, etc.

When they finish, we will start building.

Ask him, he lives in Abuja, he does not know what is going on in Port Harcourt. He just came back a few months ago to run for governorship. The difference between us is that when he served as SSG there was nothing called due process. Here, there is a law called Public Procurement Law, which we now refer to as due process. We hired the expert from a bank and said if you save us XYZ, you get XYZ, your job is to save money for us. If you apply due process and save XYZ, this is the commission for XYZ.

Tell him that part of the funds we are spending is as a result of his activities in Okrika. The Insecurity in the state started from Okrika and we are spending huge amount of money trying to protect the state. So if he didn’t cause us that problem, we won’t be spending money looking for criminals, buying equipment for the police, etc. Virtually all the vehicles that they are using, we bought. You saw APCs, we bought more than 10.

Before he became SSG, Port Harcourt was quiet. It was after him that we ran into crisis. We bought vehicles for Joint Patrol between the Police and the Army. Even the Air Force and Navy joined in the patrol to get Port Harcourt to the situation it is now.

But you were part of the government then?
They should ask the former governor. I went to him to complain and I said ‘I don’t like the way people are being killed in Okrika.’ My wife was the first person that said it at the rally. I was very frustrated and I told my wife, ‘you cannot replace life, there is no duplicate. If we burn down Government House, we can rebuild it. If we burn the State House of Assembly, we can rebuild it but if you kill, you cannot replace life.’

Why don’t you ask: ‘where is the Ijaw National Congress (INC) President?’ He is in Paris. We flew him to Paris. Just because he was supporting us, organising the Ijaws to support, he was shot. If I didn’t fly him overseas he would have died. He was organising Okrika people and the riverine people, saying, ‘we have no other candidate whether our son is running or not, our candidate is Amaechi.’

He started receiving threat messages. Then he went to Yenagoa, on his way back from Yenagoa, he was shot. I was here when they called me that if we didn’t fly him out that night he would die. That same night, I had to hire an air ambulance to fly him to Paris.

I don’t like discussing the last government because Dr Peter Odili is my mentor. He is my former boss. If Dr Abiye Sekibo was facing issues, we won’t be discussing the last government. That was why I say, ‘can we please address issues?’ But because he is not addressing issues that is why you see us talk about this. I am reminding him of all these because he is throwing stones that he should not be throwing.

How much of a threat is Sekibo to you?

He is no threat

We saw so many people in his campaign vehicles heading to Okrika from his rally in Port Harcourt…
So many people? There were three buses. Let’s assume there were 50 persons per buses, multiply three by 50, you get 150. Didn’t you see more than 150 persons at the rally? When we were going we saw three buses leaving Okrika. Okay, let’s say each bus took 100 persons, did you see just 300 persons at the rally? Is that a threat? That is why I said they should shown his rally live to see whether they can fill the stadium.

Anytime we hold a rally at the stadium, the sitting capacity is 16,000, we fill that with over 10,000 persons standing outside and inside. At the Presidential rally, you saw the crowd, over 27,000, even if there was a stampede…

What efforts have the government made to compensate victims of the stampede?
We supported in the burials and are giving assistance to the victims. I was affected personally in two ways. The woman leader is from my village. My sister’s mother-in-law died. The woman said she had been looking for me and so she wanted to come and see me at the rally.

Could you comment on allegations that your government moved against Sekibo’s campaign by sealing his campaign over non-payment of N50 million tenement rate?

If I knew that it was that lucrative I would have ran for the chairmanship. Maybe after governorship, I will run for chairmanship (laughter). I told the chairman, ‘you people collect N50 million tenement rate and you say you don’t have money to run your governments.’

I was not involved. In the first place, I was out of the country when it happened. If you know my kind of politics, I would have picked out the information and I would have stopped them.

Why are you going for second term?
I want to consolidate on what I have started. There are very huge projects that I dare ACN to try. I wish they can say let these parties govern for six- six months before the man who election can take over so that you can see.

It requires courage to look at your wallet and say you want to build a school for N4.5 billion. As I talk to you now, Saipem is threatening to pull out of site. We are meeting with them tomorrow. They are doing 180MW of power at $195 million. If you add the extension of the gas pipeline, it takes it to about $200 million. We started with $50 million from Paris Club.

You know we are saving one billion naira every month? Now, we have paid well over $140 million. They have done the turbine, they are now dealing with the transformers and they will deliver in October. So we want to raise funds.

I heard again at the press conference, they accused me of taking a bond of N130 billion. That is not correct. We said if necessary we will take a bond of N100 billion but we have not taken. We borrowed N30 billion. He wants to be a governor, he should know that governments are not run without loan.

The fact that he is using loan to campaign shows that his is not fit to be governor. Part of the economics of governance is loan. So, he is elevating his lack of economic knowledge. He should have an economic team.

My economic team is chasing me about to borrow and I will say wait. Let’s look at the N30 billion we borrowed. We borrowed for the following roads and flyovers: there is a flyover on the new road we are building to the airport, it is a federal road; the East -West road is a federal road and the flyover is on a federal road and the Federal Government has not paid us back. We have to complete that before the next loan is taken. We specifically allocated part of the N30 billion for these projects.

We borrowed for another flyover at Agip junction, it is part of the N30 billion. What makes the loan very interesting is we have started paying back. Every month they deduct N2.6 billion from our bank account, both the interest and principal, and I am told by October, we would have finished paying back. So what is he making noise about loan?

He should know that nobody can run government without borrowing. If he says we borrow money to share among ourselves that is a different thing. To say it is wrong to borrow means that he lacks the knowledge or capacity to administer the state because you must have loan as a component of administration.

Before he was saying that we were not saving one billion naira every month. He has withdrawn from that because we have replied that he can ask IBTC, First Trustees and Skye Bank. IBTC invests the money. First Trustees is the trustee and Skye Bank is the custodian of the money.

There was one month we received only seven billion naira, salary was N5.1 billion, we still saved one billion for that month because the law says we must set aside one billion naira every month and the money is about N36 billion.

All this is part of the N980 billion he was talking about, then the Ring Road in his village, the 14 primary schools and 10 health centres in his community.

He said the cost of the primary schools and health centres were outrageous. He thought it was the same six classroom blocks they used to build. He should go and see them. There is a basket ball court, football field, a track and a play ground for the children. Inside the school, there are 14 classrooms, 16 toilets, an office for the headmaster, a classroom for the nursery in case you want to establish nursery school, a library (e and hard copy), an ICT classroom, an auditorium for 500 children with a smart board.

Tell him that part of the N980 billion is we build secondary schools that take two students per room with toilet facilities. So for 1000 students, you have 500 rooms, 500 toilets, 1000 beds, 1000 wardrobes or closets. Our schools are located on 21 hectares of land We are building currently 450 that are under construction, target is 750.

Given the kind of space needed for the schools, how far have you gone in resolving the issue with people in riverine areas like Okrika where land is scarce?

The argument, which I was making to the wife of the President is that you can’t have such a school– the one in Port Harcourt has football field, basketball court and a playground but the one we have in Okrika does not have any of those things because of surrounding houses.

The second argument we made to the First Lady is you can never tell who is a pedophile in those houses surrounding the schools. In one of the schools that I visited, one person was pounding yam and it was disturbing the students who were learning.

I then told the wife of the President that there was need for us to buy the surrounding houses, pay them off and demolish the houses to make way for football field and play ground. I think we need to reconcile that with the community because the community will be losing if their children are not able to enjoy those facilities.