Amaechi: I have never taken a bribe in my life

Rotimi Amaechi, former governor of Rivers state, says he has never received bribe in his life.

Speaking at the senate during his screening on Thursday, Amaechi said: “If there is one man that doesn’t like corruption, I don’t like corruption”.

Gbenga Ashafa, a senator from Lagos state, had asked Amaechi to clear the air on the allegation of corruption levelled against him.

“I brought all the copies of the panel and there is no where that I was indicted,” he said.

“Now, you have asked me to define corruption, corruption is difficult to define. It is a very wide concept. If, for example, you are a public officer and you don’t collect bribe, I have never taken bribe in my life, but if they send a girl to you and you sleep with the girl and do that favour, that means you are corrupt.

“But Nigerians don’t know that; they think that corruption is only when you collect a bribe. Corruption is a very wide concept, very wide. If people are competing for a position and you offer your son, brother or sister an opportunity to hold that position when the person is not qualified, you are corrupt.”

Speaking further on corruption, Amaechi said the All Progressives Congress (APC) was able to capture the minds of Nigerians in the last election because of the “massive corruption” under former president, Goodluck Jonathan.

He added that he defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the APC because he “saw change in the air”.

“I hope I will not be punished if I say that there is change in the air; there is absolute change in the air and that was what led me to join the APC after leaving PDP,” he said.

“I don’t think I would be doing any good  to my colleagues and brothers in the PDP by explaining to them how we managed to take them out of power.

“But we sold to the public the fact that there was massive corruption in the system and that the only means to fight that corruption was to create a new government.

“We had a sound-mind candidate; the candidate is a man who the Nigerian public has seen as incorruptible and that was how the party had to put President Buhari forward, and we knew that he was going to do things differently.

“As good as the former president may have been, I don’t think he was suitable enough for the growth and development of Nigeria, so we needed to offer the opportunity to somebody we believe in and we believe that Buhari is better than the former president.”