The crass exhibition of brazen impudence and manifest shamelessness exuding from the odoriferous cocoon of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) clearly indicates that the sleazy carcasses of the umbrella party and their attendant large scale corruption may be scheming a serious comeback after they were disgraced out of power on grounds of incompetence, mismanagement of the common wealth and general maladministration for 16 years.
Having successfully sailed the nation into the gapping abyss of depravity with a shattered economy and forcing the people into varying degrees of abysmal living condition in their long regime which spanned over 16 years, the party and its leadership lack the rectitude and moral decency to talk about corruption which was coterminous with the governance model which they adopted to administer the country when they held sway.
Reacting to the press statement issued by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiya, calling for the sack of Amaechi, over alleged looting of N165 billion unremitted operating surplus in the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and the contract racketeering at the NDDC, invented to smirch Dame Amaechi, the party Chief admonished the umbrella party to keep quiet and allow responsible individuals and organizations make comments on critical issues, noting that the party has no moral status to comment on concerns of corruption and matters connected thereto.
He recalled how the country was sucked dry and the common patrimony looted without hints of remorse during the period the party steered the statecraft, stressing that the current APC administration is laboring hard to cleanse the stubborn stains splashed on the image of Nigeria before the global community.
Excerpts from the Press Statement captioned – “NPA, NDDC Looting: PDP Demands Amaechi, Usman’s Sack, Prosecution …Says Agencies Are Now APC Cash Cows”, and signed by Kola Ologbondiya, partly read; “The party also asks the Transportation Minister in his reported connection in the alleged involvement of his wife, Mrs. Judith Amaechi, in the exposed N48 billion contract scam currently rocking the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).”
“…Our party asserts that the fact that it took the Minister a clear six years (2016 to 2021) to query the NPA Managing Director over the alleged looting of N165 billion unremitted operating surplus of the agency, which is under his purview, is suspect and raises the public belief that he (Amaechi) only acted apparently to shield himself after indicting audit documents had already been exposed”.
Continuing, Ologbondiya said “this is in addition to reports from the office of Auditor General which also unearthed the looting of unremitted deduction to Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) amounting to N3,667,750,470. $148, 845, 745.04, Euro4,891,449.50 and £252,682.14 under the suspended NPA Managing Director and Amaechi’s ministerial supervision.”
The Audit report also exposed another N15.18 billion allegedly siphoned through shady Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) projects by the NPA, and agency under Amaechi’s ministerial purview.
“The PDP therefore rejects the obvious attempt at a coverup in the recourse to an Administrative Panel of Enquiry recommended by the Transport Minister to investigate the NPA fraud, in which he also has some questions to answer.”
“Our party insists that both the Minister and the inducted NPA Managing Director should be handed over to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for investigation and possible prosecution.”
Querying the number of times the then PDP led FG exposed and beamed its torchlight on the rampaging corruption that cascaded its 16 years rule, the party Chief said only a serious government committed to crush corruption can summon the courage to expose alleged corrupt practices involving its officials and order an unfettered investigation.
He informed the PDP that the Transportation Minister in his unblemished nature, is always at a ready to answer with verifiable records, if his attention is sought in the course of the investigation.
To buttress his commitment to an impartial investigation into the alleged sleaze, Eze said the Minister refused to make nominations into panel but asked the Head of Service to make the appointments, even when President Mohammad Buhari allowed him the opportunity to so do.
Eze described Ologbondiya, as a busybody with a grossly deficit understanding of the overt and covert efforts of the Transportation Minister in ensuring that the infrastructural revolution of the Buhari/APC government is effectively implemented in such a way to guarantee jobs and evoke massive economic fillip to the pride and benefit of Nigerians, including members of the PDP.
He reminded Nigerians that despite the monumental oil wealth the country reaped between 1999 and 2015, when Nigeria was still gasping for breath under the firm grip of the People’s Democratic Party, the country was worse than the Abacha years, with decayed infrastructure, decrepit power supply, bloated government red tapes and bureaucracy, corruption, nepotism etc.
Save the intervention of progressives like Buhari, Amaechi and others, Eze said the country would have been consigned to history because then, the clouds gathered and the atmosphere was pregnant and ready to be delivered of economic, social and ethnic crisis capable of culminating the biggest black nation called Nigeria.
The N165 billion allegedly swindled at NPA is being investigated and that exercise is the brainchild of the Transportation Minister whose stance against corruption is anchored on godly filial piety, love for humanity and crave for societal development.
The party Chief said the latest onslaught launched against Amaechi is part of contrived schemes by the opposition party to fight back at the former Rivers Governor for his roles in severing the country from the firm and corrupt claws of the former ruling PDP during the 2015 elections.
He said the fight to link Amaechi to corruption has been on since he left office as Rivers Governor, but noted that neither of the devices adopted by the opposition since 2015 has succeeded and assured that non will see the light of day, because according to him, the Minister abhors and in fact, has continued to maintain a bold stance against corruption in public service since his days as Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly.
Eze further admonished Nigerians not to be dismayed or write-off the All Progressives Congress, forgetting the great feats it has achieved for the country under the Buhari administration especially, in the areas of infrastructure, housing, human capital development, job creation etc.
He reemphasized the commitment of the APC administration to reviving the comatose Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna Refineries and strengthens the fight to eradicate poverty and corruption which were terrible bequests from the people’s Democratic Party.
The party Chief expressed optimism that given the commitment and improved efforts and strategies so far adopted by the Federal Government and Security Agencies, the resolve by the State Governors, prayers and good wishes from Christians, Muslims and Nigerians in general, the insecurity currently ravaging the nation will soon fizzle out, the odds notwithstanding.
