FORMER Rivers State governor, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, has informed the Senate that he would not respond to the petition ‎written against his nomination as minister by President Muhammadu Buhari. In a letter addressed to the President of the Senate, Abubakar Bukola Saraki, Amaechi anchored his decision not to respond to the petition on the ground that the matter on which the ‎petition was based was pending before the Appeal Court.

The letter which was signed by Amaechi’s lawyer‎, Edward E. Pepple‎ ‎, urged the Senate to protect Amaechi from being forced to comment on a matter that is pending before the courts.

The letter reads in part: “In the circumstances, we most respectfully urge the Distinguished Senate to invoke its powers and the Rules and Standing Orders of the Distinguished Senate to protect our client from commenting on the subject matter of the petition and any issues relating to or arising from the Judicial Commission of Injury and/or the purported White Paper issued thereto.

We wish to reemphasis that our client is always ready, usually enthusiastic and desirous of defending himself at all times. However, we have implored and advised him that he is restrained at this time, most regrettably, from commenting on the content of that petition, which is the subject matter before the courts of law. He is therefore not in a position to respond to the petition, issue by issue before the Distinguished Senate.

In the circumstance therefore, we urge you with utmost respect to discard the malicious petition intended to disparage and malign our client’s reputation and misrepresent him before the Distinguished Senators and the nation and create the wrong impression that our client is not a fit and proper person to occupy public office. He is a fit a proper person to occupy any position in this country. He is capable mentally and physically.”

Amaechi informed the Senate that the subject matter of the allegation raised in the petition led to the setting up of a Judicial Commission of Inquiry by the Rivers State Government to conduct an investigation and the subsequent release of a white paper by the same State government. According to him, the entire matter was before the Court.‎

The Senate had directed it’s ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions committee to investigate a petition presented to it by Senator George Sekibo, a Peoples Democratic Party from Rivers State on behalf of ‎a group called The Integrity Group. Sekibo, in submitting the petition before the Senate, had informed the Senate that the petitioners went into research and discovered that over N70billion was allegedly transferred from hard currency account to places outside the country by the Amaechi-led administration.

Sekibo continued: “ And a petition on this note was written to Mr President. I believe the President has not read it. If he has read it, he may not hurriedly nominate Rotimi Amaechi to be a minister. Amaechi is qualified to be a minister but when issues of corruption and fraud are openly x-rayed by people, it is necessary for Mr President to take a critical look and examine the allegations from these people whether they are true or not. Mr President is preaching about corruption, we applaud him for the corruption fight he is waging against whoever.

So, if you are fighting against corruption, then there must not be any sacred cow. No matter how close a person is to you, if there are allegations about him, you must spend time to critically look at them whether there are truth about the allegations that have been so submitted. I am informed that this petition was forwarded to EFCC a month or two ago and I am also informed that the EFCC is also commencing to carry out investigation.

So, why not allow this period to go over and allow them to do their investigation and come out with the result? It may be mere allegation but assuming they are true, now as a serving minister with a very big portfolio and EFCC is investigating you, can they get the result of what they are looking for? They will not get it.  We are not stopping Mr President from appointing a Rivers man to be a minister; we will welcome it. There are many APC members who were not indicted or accused of such similar issues. So, we have not seen the haste in pushing Amaechi to be a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”