The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, yesterday reacted to allegations made by Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike, on Thursday that Amaechi was behind the travails of the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen.
A statement from the minister’s Media Office said the allegations are not only spurious but disgusting. “We read with dismay and utter disgust another round of spurious allegations by the Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, at a campaign rally in the State yesterday, accusing the former Governor of the State of ‘the plot to destroy the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen.’ “This is another blatant lie just to smear Amaechi and put him on collision course with the judiciary.
Ordinarily, we would not have bothered to respond to a governor whose stock-in-trade is to concoct stories and lie about almost everything and anything. “Wike completely lacks any shred of credibility. Nothing is sacred to him,” the statement from Amaechi, also the Director General of All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council, began.
While saying the minister is not a judicial officer and therefore not part of whatever is happening in the Judiciary, the statement challenged Wike to mention the name of the APC chieftain he had the purported discussion on the “destruction of the CJN with”.
According to the letter, “this latest attack on his person is reminiscent of earlier spurious allegations during the Ikoyi-Osbornegate scandal where Wike disgracefully opened his mouth to shamelessly allege that the former Rivers State Governor, Amaechi, was the owner of the $43.4 million and the owner of the Osborne apartment in Ikoyi, Lagos, where the money was kept. “Wike lied that the money was stolen from Rivers State Government treasury.
However, in Wike’s usual chicanery, up till today, he has refused to go to Court to claim the $13 billion found in that apartment which he claimed was Rivers money stolen by his predecessor. “Even when a court of law openly asked anyone laying claim to the money to come forward and collect it, Wike ran far away from the court and chickened out.”