YOUR SAY: Amaechi clean enough to be minister?

Rotimi Amaechi is very corrupt. According to Nyesom Wike, incumbent governor of Rivers state, there cannot be a government official who is more corrupt than Amaechi.

Rotimi Amaechi is not at all corrupt. According to the former governor himself, if there is anything that he doesn’t like, it is money.

“Only God knows that if there is one thing I don’t like, I don’t like money,” he said recently. “Anybody close to me knows that I don’t like money… And the people that know me in Rivers state know that I don’t like money. In Rivers, people know I don’t like money.”

It’s a no-brainer that all the talk about Amaechi’s incorruptibility or otherwise is about the ministerial list to be released by President Muhammadu Buhari before the end of the month, and whether Amaechi deserves a place on it or not. Ordinarily, the former governor is expected to be rewarded with a ministerial post for his major role in the president’s successful election campaign

But as far as Wike and the Rivers state chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are concerned, Amaechi is too corrupt to be made minister. In the party’s latest tirade against him, it said: “The immediate past governor ran a failed administration that promoted unbridled corruption, blatant theft of state funds and the unfortunate looting of government facilities across the state. Despite getting over N3 trillion during his ill-fated administration, former governor Amaechi left a vast number of abandoned projects, unpaid salaries and pensions and a state crippled by insecurity.”

The All Progressives Congress (APC) thinks otherwise. On Monday, it described Amaechi as “clean, spotless and untainted by corruption”, saying Wike was only bent on “blackmailing and putting pressure on President Buhari not to appoint the former governor into his government”.

In what is unarguably his most eye-popping reaction to Wike’s relentless accusation, Amaechi recently claimed that the incumbent governor was too guilty of corruption to be denting his image.

“I challenge Wike to show Nigerians any company I own and other account numbers I operate other than the Zenith bank account which is the only account I operate,” he had said. “But I can publish names of several companies and account numbers which Wike owned if he challenges me. I can’t be here and a thief will be calling me a thief and denting my image.”

Maybe Amaechi knows he is corrupt and his only problem is the person leading the claim. Or he may be truly “clean and spotless” as his party claimed. That is the real reason why the people’s voice, rather than Wike’s, should be heard on this matter.

Members of the public, whom Amaechi cannot brand as thieves, should let their voice count.

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