3 November 2009
Lagos — Rivers State Governor, Chibuike Amaechi, has expressed his commitment to making a fresh start anchored on development and enforcement of law and order.
Amaechi said this in Washington DC, United States of America, during a Town Hall meeting with Rivers State indigenes residing in North America, weekend, during which he held a breakfast meeting with leaders of the various Rivers State ethnic associations in America.
Amaechi said when he became governor, the rot in the state was enormous and the developmental foundation laid by the first governor of the old Rivers State, Alfred Diete Spiff, had been dangerously weakened because past leaders paid little or no attention to building on the developmental base laid by Spiff."When we came in, the state was in chaos. If you can still recall,people were walking the streets of Port Harcourt with their hands raised. There was a dusk to dawn curfew. Businesses were fleeing the state. Social and night life was completely dead. Hotels were battling to stay afloat because there was no business. Our health, education and infrastructures had nothing, they were all gone. We had to start from the scratch," Amaechi said."We had to start by re-laying and building a new foundation for the state. For instance, I had to declare a state of emergency on the education sector after a thorough and comprehensive look at what we had then, we had to start all over again by building new schools, 750 new primary schools in all, 25 new secondary schools, moving the old university to a new site.
"Shouldn't we be renovating or adding new ones? But because there was nothing to build on in the first place, we had to start all over."
Speaking on behalf of Rivers indigenes in North America, Chairman of the occasion, Dr. Rueben Jaja, hailed the tremendous efforts of Amaechi, geared towards rebuilding Rivers State.
He agreed with Amaechi that the foundation that was laid by Diete Spiff had been weakened before Amaechi came in as governor and thanked him for inviting some members of Rivers community in America to join inthe task of rebuilding the state and laying a fresh foundation.
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