The Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Amaechi, has denied allegations of corruption against him.
Mr.
Amaechi says as governor of Rivers State for eight years, he was transparent
and did not embezzle money meant for the people.
He
denied receiving over N3.1 trillion naira as alleged by his successor, Nyesom
Wike.
Mr.
Amaechi spoke at a stakeholders’ forum on corruption organised by the Federal
Ministry of Justice in Abuja, Thursday.
He
said Rivers State became the first to implement the Bureau of Public
Procurement (BPP) act in Nigeria during his tenure as governor of the State.
“If
you had followed the Rivers State government when I was governor, we were the
first state to introduce the Public Procurement Law in the country. The state
cabinet used to call the Director General of Public Procurement in the state as
an alternative governor, that they wanted an amendment to that law. The reason
they wanted amendment is that he (DG) refused to increase the threshold to one
hundred million naira, per ministry, instead he reduced it to 10 million
naira.”
“I
had a battle with him (DG BPE) and the world bank who insisted that we should
not go for an amendment but should persuade him to increase the threshold. I
remember the cabinet tried to go to court against him and I remember that he
was also trying to go to court against Commissioners. In fact, the procurement
DG wrote a memo that I felt was very incriminating requesting that since the
law requires the governor to take any commissioner who doesn’t comply with the
public procurement law to court, I should please take the commissioner of
education to court for not complying… Everybody in the cabinet felt that he was
an alternative governor, they felt that he was slowing the process,” he said.
-Premium Times
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