Dr Austin Tam-George, Rivers state commissioner for Information and Communication has stated that he is highly embarrassed and disappointed by the statements credited to Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka in defending himself in regards to the purported N82 million dinner the professor had with one time governor of the state, Rotimi Amaechi all in the name of celebrating the Nobel Laureate’s 80th birthday anniversary at the state capital, Port Harcourt.
Immediate past governor of Rivers state and current Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi (L) and Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka (R)
On Friday, January 8, the Commissioner for Information and Communication issued a statement in which he said that he had expected the professor to condemn the inappropriate use of state resources using his name.
At the same, he noted that former governor Amaechi spent extravagantly on the dinner despite the fact that he refused to pay workers and pensioners their money. He observed that the reaction of Professor Soyinka is best described as that of a person who “suffers from a god complex, someone who does no wrong.”
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The Commissioner’s view about the money allegedly spent on the dinner is in tandem with the ideals of President Muhammadu Buhari who recently said that: “bribery and corruption are basically suffocating the country. If we don’t kill these monsters, this country would go down.”
Dr Tam-George continued by alleging that despite that the government of Amaechi got at least N3 trillion of federal allocation, the government will go down into record as that which had the highest number of abandoned projects since Rivers state was created in 1967.
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He noted that the Greater Port Harcourt city project which the former governor inaugurated was one of the abandoned projects of Amaechi’s administration despite that he spent at least hundred billion naira on it. He described the project as “a putrid landscape of corruption, broken dreams and wasted resources.”
On the allegedly huge sum of money wasted on the dinner and Soyinka’s claim as a man of integrity and honour, he asked: “Will Soyinka condemn this pornography of waste and excess by Rotimi Amaechi? Can Soyinka reasonably claim to be indifferent to the exemplary moral contrast provided by Toni Morrison?
“The American Noble Laureate Toni Morrison on her 80th birthday had a hearty laugh over coffee with friends at her home in Ohio, stressing that no tax payers fund was wasted to host a dinner for her by the state of Ohio.” He concluded.
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