By Seyi Odewale
The Rivers State Commissioner for Information and Communication, Paulinus Nsimiri yesterday explained why Governor Nyesom Wike’s administration recovered the dilapidated government quarters from civil servants and illegal occupants of the Old and New Government Residential Area (GRA), Port Harcourt and reallocated them to competent private individuals.
According to him, the decision was taken after a thorough investigation had shown that the properties were illegally and fraudulently acquired by the retired civil servants through dubious processes of allocation and sale, adding that some of the buildings were already dilapidated due to the abject neglect and lack of maintenance they suffered from the occupants.
In a release in Port Harcourt, the state capital, Nsirim, who was reacting to recent allegations of the All Progressives’ Congress (APC) candidate in the 2019 governorship election in the state, Dr Dakuku Peterside, accusing Governor Wike of seizing and dashing off Rivers State’s properties to friends and cronies, said Dr Peterside’s outburst reeked of resentful bitterness and acrimonious slander, which had made him to cross the line of decency into primitive maliciousness, adding that it was unbecoming “of a man of his supposed intelligence and claimed academic status”.
To Nsirim, the allegations were puerile and unsubstantiated, adding that they showed the pettiness and shallowness of the accuser. “Dakuku Peterside betrays his shallow pettiness by crudely attempting a graphically salacious, yet tasteless description of a functional and operational building, located in the very heart of a throbbing capital city like Port Harcourt, in line with the urban renewal initiatives of the Governor Wike administration, which is transforming Port Harcourt in particular, into a capital city of picturesque beauty,” the statement stated.
He added: “For the avoidance of doubt and with sincere apologies for repetition, we wish to appeal to the patience of those who may rightly recall, that we have explained and cleared the air on the recovery of properties, especially in previous rejoinders to this same Dakuku.
“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.
“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 into commercial, and business uses; in some cases, they were even sublet to private tenants, and some of these tenants used the premises for poultries, fishponds, barbing saloons, and other unauthorised activities.”
The taskforce, Nsirim said, also discovered that some of these properties were found to be under illegal occupation 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,” he said.
According to him, the Task Force accorded the people the right to follow due process, even though some folks stubbornly toed the ill-advised path of non-compliance, which had its well spelt out penalty. “Notices were duly served in addition to series of meetings so that nobody was taken unawares,” he said.
He explained: “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.
“The recovery of these properties and their subsequent reallocation have been properly articulated as part of the first phase of the ongoing urban renewal programme of the Rivers State Government within the Old and New GRA, Port Harcourt, which is proceeding nicely with scheduled compliance.”
Nsirim argued that Dr Peterside does not leave in the areas affected, hence he would have been able to appreciate that they are not villages as he described them. “Again, we have consistently declared that Dakuku Peterside does not live in his village, Opobo, the capital city Port Harcourt, or anywhere within and around the capital city territory, otherwise, he would have been a little bit more circumspect and less flippant before describing Rumuepirikom, a bustling, thriving modern community, located in the very heart of the state, as a “Village,” he reasoned.
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Governor Wike, Nsirim said, would not take the state’s wealth to build private mansions as some of his predecessors had done. Rather, he said, the governor has been busy building the state patriotically, developing it and transforming its capital into a befitting metropolitan hub.
On the allegation that the governor built his personal home in his village, Nsirim said: “The urban renewal programme encompasses the entire state capital area, including Rumueprikom. By the way, if Governor Wike does not build his own house in his community, is it in a foreign land that he will go and build it?
“Charity, they say, begins at home and the infrastructural legacies Governor Wike is setting down, especially the amazing, breathtaking flyovers, the state of the art unity roads and expressways and indeed the modern markets, the medical and academic establishments, amongst other excellent infrastructures both in the capital city and across the state, will remain in Rivers State and will continue to be used and utilised by Rivers people, long after his tenure would have ended.
“Governor Wike has even hinted that as his administration gradually winds down, he would be spending quite a bit more time in his country home, interacting and fraternising more with his people and carrying out his usual on the spot inspections of the projects that are still ongoing in the capital territory and across the state, to ensure their completion on schedule.”
