The Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike asserted that none of the 36 states in the Federation is “poor”.
He made this assertion while delivering a speech at the Executive Management Course 14 in Abuja, this is according to Channels Television.
Wike said that if states were poor, there would be no incentive for anyone to run for governor.
He said, “No state is poor in this country, it is this over-dependence on the Federal Government. At the end of every month, they send their Accountant-General/Commissioner of Finance for FAAC.”
“Any state that tells you we are poor and they deceive you by saying their state is poor. I keep on telling them ‘if your state is poor, why do you want to be governor? Your state is poor; you want to run the second term.”
Touching on the issue of the Value Added Tax (VAT), the governor said that after an assessment of states’ remittance to the coffers of the Federal Government, “I looked at it and saw that what the Federal Government was collecting is not their own.”
Wike noted that state governors and the president were “too powerful”, alluding to the closure of courts in the state under the leadership of the then-governor, Rotimi Amaechi.
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He said, “Nigeria is one funny country how a democratically elected governor in the history of Nigeria will take a padlock and lock the court for two years. For two years, the courts were shut down in Rivers State and you know the implication of the courts being shut down.
“We, the governors are too powerful. The President is too powerful. If the governors were not too powerful, how can a governor think of a whole arm of government, the judiciary, and shut it for two years?
“Tell me what will be the fate of those who have problems with their contracts, how do they go for determination of who is wrong or right?”
