BY Tony Edike

ENUGU- Deputy Senate President, Chief Ike Ekweremadu, Sunday dismissed as untrue, speculations that he was not in good terms with his state governor, Mr Sullivan Chime, saying  there was no rift whatsoever between them.

He also declared that no state government could run away from  implementing the N18,000 minimum wage approved for workers in the country.

Ekweremadu, who spoke with newsmen at his residence in Enugu, said there was nothing to suggest that the cordial relationship existing between him and the governor had turned sour.

The Deputy Senate President, who is also the Speaker of ECOWAS parliament, said:  “I don’t have any single problem with the  governor of Enugu State who is my very good friend, and besides,  we communicate on regular basis.

”That I do  not frequent Enugu Government House or   meddle into the  state government affairs doesn’t  mean that I am at loggerhead with the governor.”

He said that as Speaker of ECOWAS parliament, he was  always confronted with a lot of national assignments that kept him busy or  took him outside the shores of the nation.

On allegation that Governor Chime turned down  the  list of commissioner nominees he presented at the inception of the current administration, Ekweremadu said it was not true “because in the first instance,  I never sent any list of commissioner nominees  to the governor during that period.”

On the controversies surrounding the implementation of the minimum wage by some state governments, he said though the implementation might be difficult, “no state government  can run away from it since the wage bill had been signed into law bythe Federal Government.”