Mkpoikana Udoma
05 January 2019, Sweetcrude, Port Harcourt — Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike, says the termination of the sale of the Omoku gas power plant and other state government-owned assets to Sahara Energy Limited followed due process.
The Rivers State government recently announced the revocation of the sale of the power plant, among other assets, to Sahara Energy, saying the assets were illegally acquired.
Governor Wike, who asserted that no amount of blackmail and propaganda would alter the termination of the sale of the assets, stated that in revoking the sales, the state government only implemented the white paper on the recommendations of the Justice Omereji Judicial Commission of Inquiry, which investigated the sale of the assets.
Maintaining that there was no stay of execution stopping the administration from implementing the recommendations of the commission, the governor said: “The Rivers State Government was not vindictive in terminating the sale of valued state assets to Sahara Energy Limited. One company used three subsidiaries to illegally acquire state assets.
“If there was any vindictiveness, it was on the part of those who used the State Government to deny Rivers people their valued state assets”.
Wike said the Minister of Transportation, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, who executed the sales as the then governor of the state, lost at the High Court and Court of Appeal when he tried to stop the implementation of the recommendations of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry.
He said the minister of transportation and his business partner illegally bought over the state assets with a plot to install Tonye Cole, a co-founder of Sahara Energy, as governor of the state for the purchase of more state assets.
“Rivers people have come to know that only one person bought all their assets. He came and took what belongs to the entire state. Now, they want to acquire more”, he said.
