Amaechi to FT: Jonathan wants me out of office because of 2015
Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi has taken his battle against President Goodluck Jonathan to the international media.
The governor in an interview with the Financial Times of London, accused the President of of turning the Peoples Democratic Party into a 'one-man show' and of condoning 'impunity and authoritarianism' in an effort to ensure re-election in 2015.
The governor, who in a recent event in Port Harcourt, attributed his travails in the hands of Jonathan's acolytes to his fight for the retrieve oil wells stolen from Rivers State from Bayelsa State, President's home state, had a different story to tell this time.
Amaechi said that the President and his wife, Patience, were bent on removing him from office.
According to him, the root cause of his problem is is the perceived fear in the Presidency that whoever was in charge of the Nigeria Governor's Forum had the capacity to influence the presidential election in 2015.
Amechi said, 'There is this fear in the Presidential Villa that whoever chairs the governors' forum will influence the presidential election,' Amaechi told FT in Port Harcourt on Tuesday.
In a report posted by FT on Sunday, he alleged that 'what has happened has been engineered to the point where the President and his wife are trying to remove me from office.'
'We are seeing an absence of law and order that can breed anarchy. It seems those at Federal Government level are not interested in democracy, but impunity and authoritarianism. The President needs to check this,' the governor added.
Amaechi also told the FT that he had not decided on his plans for 2015. He said that efforts by some in the PDP leadership to claim that he had lost the governors' forum vote, despite him obtaining 19 votes to his challenger's (Jonah Jang of Plateau State) 16, was a concerning sign ahead of 2015.
'If they can accept 16 over 19, people should be worried,' he said.
But spokesman for the President, Reuben Abati, denied that Jonathan and his wife were in any way involved in Amaechi's travails.
'This is all local Rivers politics,' Abati said. 'It's convenient to drag the President into this, but it is not true. All these allegations are baseless.'