• He’s hallucinating, says commissioner
Rivers State Government and a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State, Dr. Dakuku Peterside, have strongly disagreed on property allegedly acquired by Governor Nyesom Wike.

Peterside, in a statement, alleged that Wike had cornered no fewer than 400 houses for himself and his cronies in ways he described as “ridiculous and undignified.”

He alleged that Wike’s house in his village, Rumueprikom, reflects luxury that includes a helipad and bulletproof gadgets, accusing the governor of being the most greedy and covetous governor in Rivers’ history.”

He said: “From Diete Spiff to Chibuke Rotimi Amaechi, we had governors, who showed humility and never turned their private houses to Government House; they never oppressed Rivers’ people with open displays of wealth as Wike has done.”

In a swift reaction, the state Commissioner for Information and Communications, Paulinus Nsirim, claimed that Peterside’s latest criticism of Wike not only reeks of resentful bitterness and acrimonious slander, but has dangerously crossed the line of decency into primitive maliciousness, unbecoming of a man of his “supposed intelligence.”

On property allegedly acquired by governor, Nsirim said: “We want to state again categorically that the Rivers State Executive Council took the decision to recover dilapidated government quarters from civil servants and illegal occupants within old and new Government Residential Area (GRA), Port Harcourt and reallocate them to competent private individuals.”

Peterside, a former House of Representatives member and immediate past Director-General, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), had also accused Wike of inflicting agonies on some senior civil servants in 2021 by ejecting them from their official residences in the old and new Government Reserved Areas (GRAs) and other areas in Port Harcourt and has converted some of the houses for his personal use, whilst others were sold-off at ridiculous market value to his friends and cronies.

But the state commissioner said: “A task force was properly constituted by the Rivers State government to carry out this mandate and the findings of the task force revealed that some of these properties were fraudulently acquired by retired civil servants through dubious processes of allocation and sale and some others also fell into utter deterioration due to the abject neglect and lack of maintenance by the occupants.

“The properties were totally in uninhabitable condition and many were converted to commercial and business uses; in some cases, they were even rented to private tenants, and some of these tenants used the premises for poultries, fish ponds, barbing saloons, and other unauthorised activities.”

“Governor Wike behaves as if he is in control of the future, disregarding the culture of civility, equity, fairness, empathy and due process associated with the exalted office of the governor. Wike is indeed a shame to Rivers’ people and all that the state represents,” he alleged.

The state Commissioner for Information, countered: “The Task Force discovered that some of these properties were found to be under illegal occupants by non-civil servants, some of whom were even non-indigenes. This, therefore, necessitated the recovery of these properties as part of government’s urban renewal programme.

“The civil servant-occupants, who were affected by the recovery, contrary to the lies and misinformation by Dakuku Peterside, now have alternative private properties through financial support provided by the state government. They are very comfortable in their new residences; a situation which would have been near impossible for them to accomplish at the time, on their civil service emoluments.”

“It completely beats the imagination to identify where Dakuku Peterside came up with the hallucination that people were ‘ejected in a ridiculous and undignified manner’ and the misleading rumour that the governor had cornered no fewer than 400 houses for himself and his cronies and then sold-off at ridiculous market value to his friends and cronies.”