..... member representing Degema Constituency in the Rivers State House of Assembly, Hon. Farah Dagogo, blasts Governor Wike's Rivers at 50 Award Committee.
Mr. Farah Dagogo who is also the House Committee Chairman on Education, betells the composition of the recipients of the awards by the committee as highly lopsided. The lawmaker decries the marginilisation of the Kalabari Nation in the awards and queries why prominent sons of the region like late Chief Marshall Harry, a pioneer politician in Rivers State who contributed immensely towards the development of the State and the late Boma Erekosima, a renowned newscaster with the State Owned Radio Station- Radio Rivers, were not honoured.
In the same vein, the Inter Ethnic Network for Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, INCRA, is dismayed at the dismal performance of the Award Committtee and the avoidable politics that characterised the exercise.
We cannot relate why some prominent sons of the State were conspicuously left out of the awards and non-Rivers persons who did absolutely nothing meaningful for the State where recognised. For instance, Justice Agumagu, a well known eminent Rivers son and the first President of the Customary Court of Appeal, who served the State in different capacities was not penned down for honour, yet the likes of Former President Goodluck and Patience Jonathan were hurriedly honoured under questionable grounds.
It is on record, that the duo of Goodluck and Patience Jonathan effectively did nothing for Rivers State through out the six years period of being at the helm of affairs of Nation. Under the Jonathan-led federal government, the State did not record a single federal project despite the fact that the State is his wife's home State and that he spent a significant part of his adult life in it.
INCRA considers it an onfall and affront on the sensibilities of Rivers people that a man who deliberately ceded oil wells belonging to Rivers people to his home state, Bayelsa on account of politics and neglected us by refusing to implement the UNEP report for the cleaning up of Ogoni land; a man who denied us the take off of the NLNG Train 7 project and left the Port Harcourt International Airport in ruins; a man who balkanised our once peaceful State and left her in sunders for political reasons; a man who tacitly encouraged political violence in the State thereby, causing us irreparable human and material losses, is now honoured by the State government. We are yet to understand the premise on which Goodluck and Patience Jonathan were deemed qualified for an award of honour and we regard it as a betrayal of the trust Rivers people reposed on the State government.
We acclaim our Leader, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, CON, for rightly rejecting the award which he aptly described as a poisoned chalice.
We therefore, call on Governor Wike to endeavour to show some level of transparency and sincerity in his dealings forthwith. Wike has completely eroded the integrity and sacredness attached to the exalted office of the Executive Governor of Rivers State that he presently occupies by plunging all activities in the State into politics and shenanigans.
Wike must understand that there is sharp a distinction between politics and governance. Rivers people have been sufficiently greeted with politics for two years under his saddle, we are now asking for a little of governance.
INCRA,
Ubima, Rivers State.
June 2, 2017
No comments:
Post a Comment