Rivers Govt Attacks Amaechi Over Politics Of Abandoned Property

The Rivers State Executive Council has described as unconscionable what it has described as the attempt by former Minister of Transportation,  Chibuike Amaechi to instigate hostility between the Igbo and the people of the State over legally foreclosed issue of abandoned property of non-indigenes.

It will be recalled that Amaechi, a former governor of Rivers State, had recently promised the return to Igbo owners their property declared abandoned by the military government immediately after the Nigerian Civil War if they voted for the APC governorship candidate, Tonye Cole in Saturday’s election.

Addressing journalists in Government House, Port Harcourt after the State Executive Council meeting presided over by Governor Nyesom Ezenwo Wike,  the Rivers State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Prof. Zacchaeus Adangor, SAN, flayed what he described as Amaechi’s attempt to play politics with the hot button  issue of abandoned property that is considered legally closed and cannot be revisited as “distasteful.”

According to him, the issue of abandoned property in Rivers State, is essentially and palpably one of law.

“You will recall that the Abandoned Property Edit No. 8 of 1969 established the Abandoned Property Custody and Management Authority and charged that authority and the responsibility of managing the property of non indigene left unattended during the Civil War.

“The constitutionality of that law has been tested in several decisions of our court, including that of the Supreme Court and that law is still a subsisting law, and it has never been invalidated by any judgment of the court.”

Similarly, the Secretary to the Rivers State Government, Dr. Tammy Danagogo, emphasized that the State Executive Council in very strong terms condemned what it described as Amaechi’s recklessness in trying to reawaken the ghosts of the abandoned property issue in Rivers State.

“I’m sure everybody, all of us, we know that, that matter has long been buried, and it is no longer practical or feasible to reawaken it. It beats every reasonable imagination why anybody would want to carry politics that far.

On his part, the State Commissioner for Information and Communications, Chris Finebone, noted that Amaechi must apparently be suffering from  selective amnesia , because as the  Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly several years ago, he had  declared the matter of abandoned property closed.

Therefore, he said it beats the imagination why the same Amaechi will today turn around to promise to revisit the issue of abandoned property just for political reasons, with the intent to deceive Igbo leaders just to garner illusive votes for Tonye Cole.

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