Adewale Banjo
A House of Representatives member from Rivers State, Solomon Bob, has taken a swipe at the Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Amaechi, over insecurity in Rivers State.
Amaechi recently claimed, in a television interview, that the state is not being considered for federal projects, including the ongoing construction of rail lines across the country because of insecurity.
Bob, in a statement, described the minister’s comment as regrettable and embarrassing. He said Amaechi’s claim was untrue and an improbable excuse which is not supported by facts.
According to him, available statistics show that Rivers State is “safer than most states in this country and is certainly safer than Kaduna and Lagos, two states of which the minister is a habitué. Besides those, there are other epicentres of mayhem and death to which the Federal Government in which the minister serves is allocating projects and committing enormous resources daily.
“All around Amaechi in the federal cabinet is evidence of prebendalism of the most extreme and unconscionable type, but the minister is either too fixated on promoting the binary fissures of retrogressive politics at home to understand, or simply lacks the requisite self-awareness to do.”
The lawmaker expressed regret that a leader of Amaechi’s status as a former governor is using his clout to lead a campaign to de-market and impoverish his own state, instead of promoting and selling it to the Federal Government and the investing public.