By Seyi Odewale

The Rivers State government, yesterday, said it stands by its claim that the state aircraft was flown to Germany some 10 years ago and abandoned there by the previous government in the state.

The state Commissioner for Information and Communication, Paulinus Nsirim, who was responding to a statement by the former Transport Commissioner in Amaechi’s administration, George Tolofari that Governor Nyesom Wike lied in his assertion that the aircraft was abandoned in Germany some 10 years ago when his predecessor was in office, said the governor did not lie against Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, his predecessor in office.

Nsirim in a release yesterday in Port Harcourt, the state capital, said: “Our attention has been drawn to a write up titled: “RIVERS AIRCRAFT: AGAIN, WIKE LIED AGAINST AMAECHI, by George Tolofari, former Rivers State Commissioner of Transport (2007-2015), dated, January 26, 2022.

“We are truly amazed at the sheer desperation with which Mr. Tolofari and indeed, several key figures of the previous administration, have been attempting with obvious futility, to deny the truth about the Rivers’ Aircraft in Germany”.

According to Nsirim, “to put the matter in its proper perspective, Governor Nyesom Wike visited Germany recently with some top-ranking Rivers indigenes, to finally lay to rest, the matter of the Rivers’ Aircraft, which had been secretly abandoned in Germany since 2012 by the previous administration”.

To Nsirim, Governor Wike had told the story of how the Rivers State government discovered the Aircraft secretly abandoned in the European country by the previous administration.

Governor Wike, the commissioner said, told the “German officials that in a bid to recover state’s assets, when he assumed office in 2015, his administration had discovered that the Legacy 600 jet, purchased by the Dr. Peter Odili’s administration in 2003 was in RUAG before General Atomics in Germany and the Germans had obliged him the privilege of coming to confirm the property belonging to Rivers’ people”.

The commissioner quoted the governor as saying: “This plane was bought in 2003 by the government of Dr. Peter Odili, and by 2007 he had handed it over to the next government, which was my predecessor’s, now, Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi. While he was in office, by 2012 this plane was brought here. Reasons we do not know.”

To Nsirim, Governor Wike’s statement had got “the members of the previous administration falling all over themselves in a frenzy of denials and puerile clarifications to exonerate their principal.”

He said: “George Tolofari in his watery defense, had gone to great lengths, especially since he was the Commissioner for Transport in the previous administration, to insist stubbornly, but with scant corroboration, that the issue of the secretly abandoned Aircraft was properly articulated, in the hand over notes passed down from the previous administration.

“We all know what manner of handover notes would be prepared by a roundly and comprehensively defeated outgoing administration, that never intended to hand over and did not even hand over at all in accordance with the recognized and accepted modus operandi of the process.”

He continued: “Indeed, Governor Wike summed it up aptly during his meeting with Markus Froetschi, Manager, Business Development, General Atomics Aerotec when he said: “The issue is, why was there no documentation to let the incoming government know that we have this facility and we sent it to RUAG for inspection. Again, I do know from experience that inspection of such a facility does not take more than six months. So, if it was brought in 2012, expectantly at least, by early 2013, the plane ought to have come back for use.”

Nsirim added: “Indeed, Governor Wike has confirmed everything they have said about the Aircraft, from its purchase by the Dr. Peter Odili administration, up until the point where the previous administration surreptitiously sneaked it into Germany on some very spurious reasons and then apparently forgot it was there for the next three years.

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“It is, therefore, better left to the imagination to conjecture what the intentions of the previous administration, which never intended to hand over in the first place, would have been, when they decided to ‘abandon’ the aircraft in Germany for three years and as the saying goes, you will have to use your tongue to count your teeth to get the answer on this matter. Rivers State remains the only state in world history where a previous government refused to hand over in a democracy.”

According to the commissioner, Tolofari, “who was part of this odium should bury his head in shame as he continues to defend his master’s profligacy”, adding that “Rivers’ people will surely be grateful and satisfied that Governor Wike has succeeded in recovering this most valuable secretly abandoned huge asset for Rivers’ people. This is the true quality of a patriotic leader who is sincerely determined to give his people quality and result-oriented leadership.”