August 17, 2021

Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to show good leadership by vetoing the National Assembly decision to jettison electronic transmission of election results in the Electoral Act Amendment Bill.

Wike who was guest on Channel TV Sunrise Daily programme, Tuesday, said Buhari should strive to leave a legacy of conducting a free, fair and credible election.

He dismissed lawmakers who voted against electronic transmission of results as shameless. He accused the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, of not willing to organise free and fair election; stressing that the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, was more democratic by improving the electoral process with the introduction of card reader and Direct Data capture machine.

“But when it was the turn of the APC, they are taking the country back rather than improving on what they met on ground,” he said.

Wike also charged the Federal Government to monitor the spending of the allocated funds to host communities in the new Petroleum Industry Act, PIA.

The Act stipulates that host communities in the Niger Delta are expected to benefit from three percent of an entity’s actual yearly operating expenditure of the preceding financial year in the upstream, midstream and downstream sectors with all contributions to be deposited in a trust fund for the host communities.

He said leaving host communities to manage the funds will cause a lot of crisis.

While noting that he is not against the allocation of the funds to communities in the Niger Delta region, the governor said there was the need for the expenditure of such money to be properly monitored.

“Paying to the host communities and leaving them alone will cause a lot of crisis. There should have been something to checkmate the communities. You are not paying to the government, I do agree. You don’t need to pay to the government. Such problems, it is necessary to nip them in the bud. You don’t allow the communities to spend the funds, there will be a loophole.

“Knowing the antecedents of the International Oil Companies (IOCs) to cause crisis in the communities for them not to release such funds to them, I was thinking that government would have had a hand in other to monitor the spending of such funds.

“What we were told is that the host communities will be determined by the operators. What we were told is that the funds will be sent directly to the host communities. If that is the case, then there are problems,” he said.