Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi has accused the National Assembly members from Bayelsa State of being responsible for the non-passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).
Speaking through his special assistant on media, Comrade Preye Aganaba, he declared the federal lawmakers incompetent, urging people of the state to vote them out in order to move the state forward.
Aganaba, while speaking during his visit to the state secretariat of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to pick the party’s nomination form to run for Bayelsa Central Senatorial District in the 2015 elections, said “The Petroleum Industry Bill has been lying fallow for over five years and Bayelsa senators are in charge of that PIB. It is amazing.
“When a ranking government official accused those in the downstream sector of taking bribes to kill the PIB, many people thought he was lying. But many years after, the PIB remains where it is.
“And we start blaming other people that they do not want it passed. Accusations were made concerning the bill and the realities are dawning on all of us now.
“We need to kick those guys out so that Bayelsa State can move forward. I mean the senators representing Bayelsa at the National Assembly. We need to kick them out because they have not done anything.
“Look at Bayelsa State, senators in other states bring five to 10 kilometres of roads, but can you point to one project any senator or Reps members have brought to Bayelsa State? It will interest you to know that one senator brought about $200m water project to the whole of Calabar, Cross River State, but here, nothing like that.”
The aspirant called on the people to stop whipping sentiment that Jonathan is from the South-South, saying that people should concern themselves with performance rather than being consumed by ethnic, religious or tribal sentiments.
He said the need to change that kind of mindset had become imperative, stressing that it was high time people separated sentiments from realities, “Other presidents have come and gone; some set up the Niger Delta Development Commission, some set up amnesty programme.”
“Those are novel and practical ideas that have impacted on our people. Those who did those things were people from other region. So, we need to separate sentiment from reality. That is the simple truth.
“Politics is not about ‘it is my brother’. It is what you can bring on the table. People should be appalled at what Yenagoa looks like. I have been to other places and there you see what people have done”.
