Opunabo Inko-Tariah, a one-time Special Adviser to ex Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, has come down hard on the former Governor for his attempt to control and stifle the sitting Governor of Rivers State.
Inko-Tariah who served a couple of months in the first administration of Wike said Wike does not have the clout in Rivers State that the world thinks he has. He described Wike as an opportunist who wants to control everything and everyone. He said Wike’s attempt to make the state ungovernable for the new Governor, Sim Fubara will fail.
The statement was made on the Thursday edition of the Arise Tv Morning Show, anchored by Reuben Abati and Rufai Oseni.
When asked by the news anchors about all the stories of project commissioning on a weekly basis by the former Governor who is now the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Inko-Tariah lambasted Wike on that strategy. He claimed Wike prioritized building bridges to be able to siphon money to his pockets.
He said:
People talk of good governance in Rivers State, you talk of infrastructure, I think it’s a distorted understanding of what really went on in Rivers State. For eight solid years, there was no agriculture in Rivers State, the employment rate dropped. We are about the least employed state in the country. People were hungry and you are talking about the infrastructure.
Inko-Tariah further accused Wike of trying to control everybody and everything.
He said Wike wanted to control who had access to the Governor and Government House and further accused the FCT Minister of trying to control both the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) structures in the oil rich state.
He is quoted:
“What he wants is absolute control. He doesn’t want anybody, even those that are supposed to visit the Governor in the government house are being restricted.”
“It is incontrovertible. I can tell you that. For example, now, we have the recent appointment of the caretaker committee of the APC, we are talking of the members; Tony Okocha and co. These were all engineered by Nyesom Wike. It is no hidden fact. They were all orchestrated by him. Meanwhile, to leave the PDP, he doesn’t want to leave. As for the PDP, of course, before he left the state, he was in charge of the structure, you know, the governors and leaders of the party.“
“When he said someone wants to take away the structure from him, it’s completely laughable. He suffers from the eclipse of reasoning and poverty of logic. If you talk of the structure, we have the likes of Peter Odili who had the strongest structure and strongest hold of the structure in Rivers State.“
“The problem we are having in Rivers State is a pestilence of Godfatherism. It is a situation where you have wealth, painted by cupidity and is being festered by the desire to control. That is what is going on. The present minister himself said he bought forms. In any civilized clime, by now he should be cooling off in one of these DSS or police detention camps. He bought forms with whose money?“
Recall that the crisis in Rivers State started after the State House of Assembly had tried to impeach the Governor over undisclosed issues. This led to the burning of the inner chambers of the Assembly Complex in Port Harcourt, the state capital.
Observers rightly believed that the move was orchestrated by Wike who is known to control almost all the political office holders in the state. Governor Sim Fubara was handpicked by Wike to be his successor in the 2023 Gubernatorial elections in the state.
How and when things went sour between the political Godfather and his godson is not clear but what is clear is that the battle for the control of the state is just starting.
