Amaechi must stop insulting Jonathan, wife - Rivers PDP… outbursts are arrant nonsense - Gov's aide

By The Citizen

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Rivers State yesterday warned Governor Rotimi Amaechi to stop insulting President Goodluck Jonathan and his wife, Dame Patience.

The party accused Amaechi of resorting to cheap blackmail and mischief in his fight with the first couple.

Chairman of the PDP in the state, Chief Felix Obuah, labelled the governor's action as irresponsible and vowed that further insults on the president and his wife will no longer be tolerated.

Obuah was reacting to the statement by the governor in Abuja last Friday to the effect that Dame Patience influenced the posting of the Rivers Commissioner of Police, Mbu Joseph Mbu, in February, from the Oyo State Command.

The NGF chairman also insisted that Mbu must be redeployed for taking sides in the Rivers political crisis and behaving like a politician, while declaring that the national dialogue initiated by President Jonathan was a waste of time.

Obuah said the party has had enough of Amaechi's penchant for insulting and dragging the names of President Jonathan and the First Lady, Dame (Dr.) Patience Jonathan, in the mud.

'This untoward attitude of Amaechi, which has become his tradition, with no other aim than to lower the reputation and personality of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and son of the Niger Delta in the estimation of the right-thinking members of the society, has continued to be fired and given undue impetus by Governor Amaechi and a few of his friends on this satanic mission, against all wise counsel and good conscience.

'We wonder what Amaechi further intends to achieve by repeatedly maligning the president and his family and linking them to any predicament that befalls him.'

The party chieftain said the PDP is 'not happy with this public opprobrium from Amaechi. We will no longer condone this irresponsible, irrational and malicious disrespect for our dear president and his wife, by a paranoid Amaechi.'

'It is regrettable that rather than admit that he is confused and has lost focus, Governor Amaechi deludes himself into believing that the only thing he can do to gain back the confidence and trust of the disappointed Rivers people is to accuse President Jonathan of being responsible for his non-performance.'

But responding to the PDP's statement, the Chief of Staff, Government House, Port Harcourt, Chief Tony Okocha, dismissed Obuah's outbursts as arrant nonsense.

He said on phone that it was a statement of fact that the First Lady influenced the posting of Mbu Joseph Mbu to RiversSstate from Oyo State in February this year as Commissioner of Police, to do some dirty jobs, which his predecessor, Mohammed Indabawa, now in Oyo Command, refused to do.

He insisted that at no point did the governor insult President Jonathan and his wife.

Okocha said: 'Governor Amaechi was elected to serve the people of Rivers State. He has the mandate of Rivers people till 2015 by God's grace. Confusion and loss of focus exist in the imagination of Obuah and his confused supporters.

'Rivers people know that Governor Amaechi has been performing well and delivering the dividends of democracy. The developmental strides of Governor Amaechi in Rivers State are unprecedented. No Rivers Governor has done one tenth of what Governor Amaechi has done.

'Nothing good can come from the enemies of progress. Obuah and his cohorts have constituted themselves into enemies of the focused Amaechi's administration. They do not represent Rivers people.'