By Somiari Joseph Ogolo
It is no doubt a fact that Governor Wike of Rivers State is an expert in poverty creation. Since his emergence as governor, he has deliberately ensured that Rivers people become poorer, beginning from members of his own party, the PDP
He started with ensuring that Timariv was dissolved without recourse to the laws setting it up and returned thousands of persons already engaged by the agency into the pool of the unemployed persons.
Next on the line was RSSDA. No staff of that agency has been paid since his inception as Governor. It is so bad that the Sole Administrator he appointed resigned.
The pensioners are not left out as he has continued to ensure that people who served the state meritoriously die of starvation and lack of funds to care for themselves and family.
Even the civil servants who were initially singing and dancing for him ignorantly are suffering the same fate. Those who retired since 2015 are still without any headway over their gratuities and other entitlements. Those who got promoted since early 2015 and even before are yet to enjoy their new salary scale. The Governor does not care.
His commissioners are at best, errand boys and girls who know the workings of their Ministries only to the extent that the Governor wants them to know, as everything is solely done by him in Government House.
The 3rd tier of government is not spared as since July 2015, after the Federal High Court gave a kangaroo judgment that ousted the duly elected Chairmen and Councillors of the Local Govts, Gov. Wike has continued to ensure that the Local Govts suffer sharp retrogression occasioned by his direct control of their federal allocations. He designed a template with which the Chairmen, members and their aides are paid, releases only the salaries of the local government staff and withholds the rest for himself and his cardinals. Aside a handful, there is no CTC Chairman in Rivers State today that can boost of 1m. Except that Chairman made it in his private biz.
While the governor has continued to make the state unproductive, insecure, non-viable and unsafe, he has also continued to increase his security votes for his own betterment mostly for bribing and arming youths whose future he ought to be more concerned about.
This same approach, the governor has used on the Rivers state House of Assembly and state Judiciary. Only yesterday, a PDP legislator representing Ahoada East State Constituency 1, Martins Manna, came all out to accuse the State Govt. and the Speaker of marginalization, fraud and intellectual impoverishment.
As if these are not enough, Governor Wike recently flagged-off a loan scheme for civil servants that will further impoverish and retire them to their early grave without any savings. What is wrong with him paying them their salaries and increment as at when due?
It is time Rivers people wake up and dust their PVCs preparatory to retiring ineptitude, retrogression, poverty, early death caused by wickedness of a Governor and enthrone a government that shall care for the welfare of the people and bring development to the doorstep of all communities and Local Governments in the state.
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