Chairman of Nigerian governors forum and Rivers State governor, Rotimi Amaechi has said President Goodluck Jonathan “is supervising a highly corrupt government,” adding that what is playing out in the political space supervised by the Police and the Presidency is not democracy.
Amaechi, who spoke in Abuja on Saturday, insisted he had no personal quarrel with President Jonathan but that if only governance could be separated from him, Jonathan remains “a good man.”
Reacting to the invasion of the National Assembly by the police last Thursday, Amaechi described the act as uncivilised. He regretted that the President “is supervising a highly corrupt government.”
In the words of the governor: “We don’t have democracy in Nigeria yet. What we have is diarchy. We don’t have a democracy. Diarchy is dictatorship. The Federal Government has appropriated the police as its personal property. The FG has taken over the police. See the way the police took over the National Assembly. By law, the police have no power to invade the National Assembly and they have no power to stop the Speaker from going in or out of the National Assembly complex. But they don’t obey law.”
He insisted that his party, the All Progressives Congress, would not go to court if the PDP decided to rig the 2015 presidential elections.
Instead of going to court, he said the APC would form a parallel government.
He said, “What is the essence of going to court when the Federal Government don’t obey the law. That’s why the APC say we won’t go to the court any longer. If you rig us out, we would rig ourselves in; which means if you think you can rig us out in 2015, we will form our own government. We have met on that and we have agreed on that. We will instal our own government and there would be two governments.
“The only way to avoid a parallel government is to have a free and fair election. You can’t continue to use the police as if it is a private agency or company of the government.”
While saying the Police in South Africa is currently investigating President Jacob Zuma, he wondered if the police in Nigeria would be allowed to play such a role here in Nigeria.
Amaechi said, “The Federal Government deliberately allowed the Boko Haram to overrun many villages in the North-East. If it is not a political agenda, why would the military not be able to chase away the rag-tag army of Boko Haram?
“They don’t want elections to hold in the zone so that there wouldn’t be election in the zone. If there is no election in the North-East, they believe that the APC would lose.
“If they are not afraid of the APC, let them restore law and order. The zone is in the hands of the APC. Borno, Bauchi, Gombe, Adamawa and Yobe states are all APC states. The only state where it could be 50:50 is maybe Taraba State. Apart from this, other states in the zone have always voted for Maj.Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, one of our presidential hopefuls.”
