Amaechi denies promising to return abandoned property to Igbo in Rivers

A former minister of transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, on Tuesday dismissed the claim that he promised to return all the abandoned property to Igbo living in the state.

The former Rivers State governor had during a stakeholder meeting with the Igbo community in the state expressed regret at their loss of properties in the state following the 1967–1970 civil war.

He added that everything they had lost, including their homes, would be returned to them in due time.

In a statement issued by his media office, Amaechi argued that some “unscrupulous and ill-advised individuals” twisted and misrepresented his remarks at the meeting.

He stressed that since the Igbo who abandoned their properties in Lagos and the Northern part of the country had their properties back, Port Harcourt properties should not be treated differently.

The former governor accused Governor Nyesom Wike’s administration of spreading false information about him.

READ ALSO: Fresh crisis rocks Rivers APC as Amaechi’s former aide declares self party leader

The statement read: “We are astonished that even the respected Rivers State Council of Traditional Rulers fell for the false story and fake news being propagated by the Rivers State Governor without making any effort to clarify what Amaechi actually said; yet they went ahead to address the media, castigating and condemning the immediate past Rivers State Governor on the basis of a fake, ill-conceived story obviously concocted by the current failed Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike.

“We would ordinarily not respond to these kinds of comments deliberately twisted by the rarely sober Governor Wike and his agents of wickedness and mischief who Rivers people and Nigerians know they trade in divisive fake news to malign the person and character of Amaechi.

“Amaechi did not and has never said anything about compensation on abandoned properties to the Igbo in Rivers State.

“He only rehashed his apology to the Igbo when he became governor of Rivers State, that he was sorry on behalf of the state on abandoned properties from the Nigerian civil war.”

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