Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State has urged Rivers people to vote out the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP-led Federal Government in the next year’s elections to secure their future.
Amaechi, at weekend in Degema, headquarters of Degema Local Government Area of the state, after commissioning an 8,000-sitting capacity football stadium complex built by the council, said that the PDP has nothing to offer Kalabari people, and one way for the people to regain their lost oil wells and benefit from democratic governance was to vote out the PDP.
Amaechi explained that the President was taking sides in the Soku oil wells matter, as he narrated the president’s reaction during a meeting with Kalabari chiefs.
He said: “In that meeting, before Kalabari chiefs, Mr. President said to us, ‘you people call it Soku, we from Bayelsa call it Oluasiri. Is SokuOluasiri?’ he questioned and the people said ‘No.’
“As President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, he is not supposed to take sides. The moment he said it is called Oluasiri, he was taking sides and we have no faith in Mr. President returning our oil wells. They have taken the (Soku) oil wells, they are spending the money because they have the Presidency.
The only way you can get back your oil wells is to vote out PDP. The only opportunity you have now is your vote. Vote him out, he is not Rivers, He is from Bayelsa. He has not and will not serve us and I have said here, let Mr. President tell us what he has done for us.”
He noted that his efforts to build Trans-Kalabari Road in the state and reconstruct the Emohua-Abonnema federal road already in deplorable condition were frustrated by President Jonathan.
He called on the people to fight for their rights by using their voting strength to correct all anomalies by voting out the ruling PDP.
“When I was coming here (to Degema), I saw the Emohua-Abonnema Road, it’s going bad. When I met the President with Kalabari Chiefs and I told the President: ‘that road is going very bad, if we don’t intervene now, that road will soon be impassable.
Mr. President said, that road is a federal road’, and he said, he knows. And I then asked: ‘Mr. President, can the Rivers State Government reconstruct that road? Because that is the only road by which Kalabari people come out to town’ but Mr. President said no.”
