Governor Nyesom Wike is to be blamed for the failure to pay Rivers State civil servants, pensioners and contractors, the State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has said. The party in a statement

signed by the State Chairman, Dr. Davies Ibiamu Ikanya, said it would be wrong to lay the blame at the doorstep of President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC-led Federal Government.

“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,” Rivers APC said in the statement issued on Monday in the state capital, Port Harcourt.

The statement noted that Rivers State presently collects the highest revenue from the Federation Account each month. “Apart from this, Rivers generates the highest Internal Revenue after Lagos and Kano states. 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,” Rivers APC said.

The party lamented: “Sadly, Wike has squandered all these funds on things that have little or nothing to do with the good of Rivers State and its people. 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 advised the people of the state to stop suffering in silence but to continuously demand good governance from the ill-prepared Wike administration and to hold it fully responsible for the monumental suffering which he has inflicted on the people of the state since he bulldozed his way into the Government House. The rerun election coming up on 10th December, 2016 is an appropriate opportunity for the Rivers State people to express their anger on this misfortune and ill-prepared administration of Chief Nyesom Wike by voting against PDP Candidates.

•Photo shows Governor Wike.

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