By Nicholas Ojo
Popular businessman and politician, Ned Nwoko has accused the Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike of making fraudulent claims on the alleged payments of 13% derivation to South-South States.
Wike had during the inauguration of the Port Harcourt Campus of the Nigerian Law School recently, said President Muhammadu Buhari had approved and paid the arrears of 13 per cent derivation to Rivers, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo and Akwa Ibom.
The governor said President Buhari’s gesture was the major source of revenue for his projects, including the flyovers, the law school and the cancer centre.
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“Monies that were not paid to the Niger Delta states since 1999, mainly 13 per cent deductions, the president approved and paid all of us in Niger Delta states,” he said.
But the Delta State Commissioner for Finance, Chief Fidelis Tilije, said contrary to the revelation by Wike, Delta only received N14.7 billion in three quarterly instalments of N4.9 billion each.
Speaking at a news conference in Asaba, Tilije said the state government had remained committed to transparency and accountability in all its financial dealings on behalf of the people.
But reacting, Nwoko, in a statement issued by his Media Directorate, which he personally signed, vowed that it was only a matter of time for Wike to end in jail over his alleged corrupt practices.
“With the agreed amounts settled, some states like Rivers approached commercial banks and discounted theirs in full and collected, but Senator Ifeanyi Okowa said he would not want to leave the next administration with a huge debt burden.
“He resorted to discounting only N150 billion out of the N240 billion expected receivables, but later pruned it down to N100 billion.
“So far, we have gotten N14.7 billion in three quarterly instalments and we have also accessed N30 billion out of the N100 billion we applied for as bridging finance,” he explained.
However, Ned Nwoko who clinched the Peoples Democratic Party senatorial ticket for Delta North district ahead of the 2023 general elections, said Wike was trying falsely and maliciously to instigate the people against some governors.
“Wike postures deceptively in panic to cover his tracks on the well-known serious open secret of his involvement in national economic sabotage through oil bunkering.
“If the governor’s mischievous vituperations on the Paris Club refunds are off-key and unserious, his pedestrian shout on Ned Nwoko’s matrimony amounts to nothing.
“His false, childish tantrums that the man has imaginary ‘20 wives’ sounded like beer parlour gossip, unbelievable from the lips of a governor. How nauseating and condescending. But that is Wike, ever steered by gutter language and uncouth tempers.
“Let Wike delude himself in a bogus gubernatorial robe. By six months time, he would descend into a commoner, stripped of all immunity, bare from boastful manners and haughty airs. Prince Ned Nwoko, a civil fellow who has never been on the street with Wike would then compel him to answer questions about his litany of lies and corrupt misdeeds. He is poised, resolutely waiting to bring the Rivers State governor to justice very soon.
“Since Wike lost the PDP presidential ticket and failed nomination for Vice presidential slot because of his brash and unreliable temperament, he has been weeping, nagging on Television and every fora.
“Rather than lick his self-inflicted wounds remorsefully, he chose an inglorious path of blame game and transferred aggression. How pitiable for a fake emperor tumbling like the old nursery rhyme clown Humpty Dumpty.
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“We hereby wish to emphasise for the avoidance of doubt that no external influence whether overtly or covertly moved Prince Ned Nwoko to challenge Wike’s excesses as the Star Prince of Anioma is a man of his own clout, unaffected and independent by nature.
“He is driven by the conviction as a pioneer and strong stakeholder in PDP, that an unhinged Wike, a latter day political noise maker and opportunist has become a power-drunk bull in a China shop who must be decisively handled, before he plots more divisive embarrassment,” he said.