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The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State has said that Governor Nyesom Wike is to blame for failure to pay civil servants, pensioners and contractors in the state.
The party, in a statement signed by the State Chairman, Dr. Davies Ibiamu Ikanya, said it would be wrong to blame to President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC-led Federal Government.
The party said: “We as a political party truly sympathise with Rivers civil servants, pensioners and contractors over their current travails. However, we wish to disagree with insinuations in some quarters in the state that President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC-led Federal Government are responsible for this unfortunate situation.
“The truth is that Governor Wike and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are solely responsible for the woes of Rivers workers, retires and contractors, by refusing to pay them for the past eight months”.
It said that the state collects the highest Federal Allocation each month and “generates the highest Internal Revenue after Lagos and Kano states.
It said further: “In addition, Wike has borrowed a whopping sum of N150 billion since he assumed office on May 29, last year without anything tangible as an achievement to show for all these funds so far collected”.
The party accused the governor of squandering the funds on irrelevant projects, saying: “Rather than to pay civil servants, pensioners and
contractors, he has chosen to waste scarce resources on hosting all manner of conferences, sponsoring PDP candidates running for election in other states; hosting failed PDP conventions; promotion of
bloodbath, insecurity and associated evils in Rivers State and bribing people everywhere. He prefers spending the money he should use to pay salaries and uplift the lives of Rivers state people and prefers to flex muscles with Abuja in his bid to be seen as the PDP leader in the country.”
Rivers APC then asked the people of the state to stop suffering in silence but demand good governance from the state government.
It said that the rerun election coming up on December 10, 2016 was an opportunity for the people to express their anger on the current administration in the state.