Rivers State Governor, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, spoke with some journalist during the week in Port Harcourt on the outcome of last Saturdays presidential election in the country which results showed that the state gave the president the highest number of votes cast and the chances of his party in the April 26 governorship and House of Assembly elections, among other issues. ONYEDIKA AGBEDO was there. Your Excellency, it is a pleasure talking with you this evening especially at a time like this when you are about facing a major challenge by way of election on Tuesday.But you know an event took place in the country last Saturday when the presidential election was held. From the figures released Rivers State gave the president the highest number of votes cast. First, tell us how it happened How did you manage to win so big for the president because it was like the other parties didnt exist And how would you respond to the allegation by the CPC presidential candidateI am not in a position to respond to his allegations because they limited the movement of the governors on election day. I went to my unit to vote. I didnt even go beyond my unit in my village. After voting I went back to Port Harcourt and slept off only to wake up to hear results.In my unit there was an improvement from that of the National Assembly. In the National Assembly we had 306 voters and then for the presidency 368, so a different of 62. If you check that and approximate it round you know that there was an increase in turnout of voters as a result of enthusiasm by the citizens of Niger Delta to ensure that they supported their son.I limited myself to my unit where I voted and I am sure that virtually everybody there voted for PDP, even though I didnt wait for the votes to be counted before I drove back.I was more apprehensive in the first one, the National Assembly election, so I personally monitored the results, calling people to find out the results. But this one I knew everybody was voting for Jonathan so I went home to sleep and woke up to be hearing results of different states and heard that of Rivers and all that. So, I am not in a position to say what happened nationwide.But how does giving Jonathan the highest votes make you feelIt was expected. I said it before the elections that in view of the fact that Goodluck grew up here in Port Harcourt, he didnt grow up in Bayelsa, the people will vote for him. I dont know where he had his primary and secondary education but at least at the university, he was a pioneer student of the University of Port Harcourt and obviously you should expect that he is known in Port Harcourt. He grew up here in Port Harcourt, worked here and only left here when he became a deputy governor. It is less than 10 years ago, so he is known here and you expect that people would generally support him.Do you envisage such turnout of voters on Tuesday when you will be runningPerhaps, but you should realise that that is a local election. We did aggregate interest in the case of President Jonathan. Now, there will be differences. Everybody wants his own man there.So, does that make you foresee a strong oppositionI dont think I foresee strong opposition. I expect to win. I expect to win in view of the fact that there are physical projects that you can see.Not even with the challenge by ACNWhat challenge ACN is not on ground in Rivers State. There are so many ways to look at the election. I come from Ikwerre Local Government Area, so you expect that Ikwerre will support me, and I heard that Ikwerre Local Government has 109,000 registered voters.The best way to assess the governorship election is to look at National Assembly elections. Most people dont know who the members of National Assembly are. So, it was PDP, Governor Amaechi, ACN, Abiye Sekibo, APGA, Celestine Omehia. That was what we saw on that day and we defeated Celestine. We come from the same ward, we come from the same family, we defeated him there. His excuse was that he never sponsored any candidate for National Assembly. Same thing with Sekibo. We defeated him even in his ward.Despite all our assurances they are still sending the information that there will be violence in the state, they are not even saying PDP will be violent, they say, you know we have the bad boys, the militants are here, we are bringing them out on the election day. But have they forgotten that as governor of Rivers State I have never taken security lightly So, just like it happened in National Assembly, when they said, oh, it would be violent and it was violence free, the same thing will happen in the governorship election.Tell us a little bit of some of the major things very dear to you that you have done for the people of Rivers State that also gives you confidence that they are more likely to give you their support than to any other candidate on TuesdayUppermost in my heart is our investment in education and health. We have been able to provide free education and free health care. In the free education, unlike before where they do free tuition and they referred to it as free education, we have gone a step further to provide free tuition, free school uniform, free sandals, free books and at the secondary level, free boarding.In the secondary schools we are building we are making it compulsory for the children to board. The textbooks for all the subjects you are studying at the primary school level are free; at the secondary school level they are also free. Cabinet opposed me seriously on it. They felt that if we dont tax them, that if we dont ensure that parents pay for something, they would not value it. I said yes, I dont know how many of you here grew up in Diobu but I did, so I understand what poverty is.I know what it took for me to go to school. The president said he went to school without sandals. I did that from primary one to close to class three in secondary school. So, it was not easy.So, if you saw those challenges and now you are living in a condition that is different from that, you must not forget that those challenges are still there, only a very small percentage of the people who were there have left, so you need to do something. The best you can do is to try and extricate them from the crushing effect of poverty and what are those things that affect them mostI knew how my father used to go around to borrow money to pay for my school fees. As for books, they dont bother buying because they dont have the money. And we were not able to form reading habits because there were no books to read.The next thing that is pressing is the fact that most parents are not able to take their children to hospitals so they would approach pharmacist stores. As a child growing up in that area, your parents are not able to take you to hospital because they are not able to fund the cost so what do they do They go to what they referred to as chemist shop and say give me malaria medicine, how do you know it is malaria The only way you will know is if you go to the hospital. So, we said we would build health centres.We have commissioned a lot and they have doctors. It is usually said that accessibility must come with the ability of individuals to pay-affordability. So, if you say you have given access by building, if there is no affordability you have not provided access. So, even without the support of the cabinet I insisted on free health care. So, providing the hospitals and free health care will enable the people to approach the health centres.But we have a problem in the rural areas. People are still not going to the health centres. We still need to do enlightenment to ensure that parents and young men and women go to the health centres in the rural areas because they are still used to the native form of medical practice. They say old habits die-hard but we are getting there. At least, we attempt to reduce maternal child mortality rate in the state since we are now encouraging mothers to have their birth at the health centres.How soon will that rail project endI cant be too specific on that for now, you know we have had cash squeeze, so that has affected the timeline.What about the new Greater Port Harcourt CityNational sports festival is in June. You will see activities there. Rivers State University of Science and Technology (RSUST) is under construction there. The stadium is nearing completion. They have completed lawn tennis, volleyball, basketball, swimming pool, those ones are ready. The stadium we are building has capacity for 25,000 people. We are doing internal roads connecting them to the Port Harcourt-Owerri road, taking you out to the road that leads to the airport.The ACN candidate Abiye Sekibo has accused you of shielding corrupt politiciansDont make me talk about it. He who goes with equity must not go only with clean hands but their hands must be as white as snow. I have told them to close their mouth o. How can I shield corrupt politicians and be doing how these projects. I always say all governors are faced with two optionsto either be corrupt and put the money in their pockets with others and abandon the government or to face development and either avoid or reduce corruption. Which one do you think is going on in Rivers StateSo, when Sekibo talks, my happiness is that you need to know who is talking. Nobody comes forward to accuse me of corruption, because they know if they do that the state will react. I tell them everyday, I reply them on the campaign field. I said they have houses in Abuja, they should show me my own house. Eight years as speaker, my colleagues in the House of Assembly were building houses here and there, three years plus as a governor I dont have a house.What are the things you will like to do in your second comingThey are there, but first, any focus is consolidation, complete what I have started. Dont leave behind any project that can become an abandoned project. Complete the secondary schools, complete the primary schools, complete he health centres, complete the monorail, focus on the new city and ensure that we do the internal roads, portable water, seaways, provide public facilities, complete the new university, the malls we want to build in this city, complete them.Are there mistakes you would like to correct in your second coming Are there things you would like to do differentlyThe mistakes wont be in construction works, they would be in administration. There were people who came when we were new and took advantage of our inexperience.Finally, what is your message to Rivers voters as you prepare to go into the elections on TuesdayThey should please vote for PDP. It is not only about Amaechi because I also have members who are contesting for House of Assembly seats. The first thing is to thank the voters, which I will do very soon for their support. I am pleading with them to kindly by Gods grace, vote for Amaechi and all other members of the PDP. They should just go there and thumbprint for umbrella. They should not thumbprint anywhere else.
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