Murder allegation: Wike ought to be quizzed by security agencies – FG

Federal Government has said that Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers state is taking advantage of his immunity from arrest and prosecution to make all kinds of allegations against the Federal Government.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, said this to State House correspondents in reaction to Wike’s recent allegation that the federal government was plotting to assassinate him.

The Rivers State governor in a thanksgiving to mark the third year anniversary of his administration at the Living Faith Church in Port Harcourt had said: “Intelligence report available to us as at this morning indicate that they are plotting to assassinate me in a crowd and claim it was accidental discharge.

“The level of conspiracy against Rivers State is unfortunate. Instead of focusing on governance, they focus on how to assassinate me or frame me up.”

But Mohammed while fielding questions from reporters after Wednesday’s Federal Executive Council, FEC, meeting said that the governor was supposed to be picked up by the police if he were an ordinary citizen.

Mohammed recalled that when he made a similar allegation some years ago, he was invited by the police for clarifications.

“As to the question about the allegation by the governor of Rivers that he has information that he will be assassinated by the federal government in a crowd.

“I think one of the beauties of being a governor is that you enjoy immunity from prosecution and arrest. Because, I remember a couple of years ago when I made similar allegations, I was invited to Force Headquarters,” he said.

Also briefing journalists, the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning Senator Udoma Udo Udoma expressed satisfaction with the performance of
the economy in first quarter as published by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS.

He said, “I presented the latest NBS GDP result which was released on Monday. It showed a GDP growth rate of 1.95 percent with both the oil as well as the non oil sectors continuing to grow. Council was most encouraged by this result particularly because the first quarter is usually the weakest quarter.

“With this first quarter of 1.95 percent we are on track to achieve the 3.5 percent GDP growth rate which is our target for this year particularly we
believe that once the infrastructure spending in the 2018 starts to kick in, the whole economy will receive a further boost as more jobs will be created, consumer spending will increase thereby improving the performance of the servicing sector.

“And apart from the GDP numbers, Council is also very happy to see the positive trend in all other major economic indices including inflation which has been trending down and capital importation which has been going up as well as our Foreign Currency Reserve which has been going up.

“You will recall that our FOREX 2016 was about $23 billion and now it is $47 billion.

The Minister of Interior, Abdulraman Danbazzau said, he I presented a memo on behalf of Nigeria Immigration Service which  was approved.

“The memo has to do with consultancy service for the construction of our technology building. That technology building is meant to accommodate our
data communication command of control center which will be manned and managed by the Nigeria Immigration officers.

“We realized when we came in that we have a couple of data basics which were being handled by service providers that were engaged in a kind of PPP arrangements and the data involve that of passport issuance, visa issuance and green paper for resident permit.

“So we are bringing all that together in the interest of national security under the control of Nigeria Immigration Service contrary to what we have been obtainable whereby service providers have been handling the data bases contrary to the interest of national security.

“The total worth of the consultancy service is N583 million at five percent VAT at a completion time of 23 months,” he announced.