By Rivers State Gov't media
Rivers State Governor and Chairman of Nigeria Governors’ Forum, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi said his perceived misunderstanding with the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan arose out of his desire to provide a conducive learning environment for the children of Okrika, home town of the First Lady
Amaechi said he has enormous respect for bothPresident Goodluck Jonathan and his wife, Patience.
He spoke when clergymen of the Niger Delta Bishops’ Forum visited him in Government House, Port Harcourt on Friday as part of their efforts mediate in the political crisis in the state. The bishops had some weeks back visited the First Lady and Minister of State for Education Nyesom Wike in Abuja as part of their efforts to resolve the issues
Amaechi said: “My lords, I don’t know what to say, believe me, the only thing I want to say to you is that and I want to be put on record that the wife of the President said when My wife came to beg me, I pushed her away. I have never quarrelled with my wife publicly, and I will never quarrel with my wife publicly. So there is no time I pushed my wife away, and there is no time I will push my wife away. I justwant to correct that so that nobody goes away with the impression that somebody told my wife ‘go and talk to your husband, she came and I pushed her away’. No, that day I simply walked away into a bus and I sat down until they finished. So all I did was go back to the bus to enable my wife perform her official function of someone who had received the wifeof the President and escort her to all the places she wanted to go to”.
“I hope that it (this mediation) will work. Niger Delta Monarchs came and no result came out ofit and since you are men of God I hope that thisone God will bless it. I hope so because that is the same way I spoke to them(the monarchs) and they said, ‘watch out, it will work’, and they never returned because it never worked. There are so many persons who had come to mediate but nothing came out of it. If it is peace that everybody wants, I am ready for peace. When you say you are seeking for permission, I am wondering why, because if you did not have the permission you would not have gone to see the wife of the President. The mere fact that you have seen the wife of the President means that you have initiated the peace move, so you don’t require any further approval than the approval of God that you have started with."
“There are aspects of the story that is public that I need to correct. lord Bishops please allowme correct those ones too because when you spoke with the wife of the President she spoke publicly. She said and I concede to her when she said she is my mother. As wife of the President who is the head of government and head of the nation, she is my mother and you expect that as my mother she should be able toprotect her son. No mother takes away a PoliceCommissioner to the detriment of her son, so when next you see my mother, please tell her that she should try and protect her son.
“The other aspect is the Okrika story when she visited. Like I said, as the governor, by protocolI will receive the President and you know that the President is not just our President, he is thehead of the nation but when the wife of the President came I went to receive her at the airport and she slept in Port Harcourt. The next day she came up with a programme that was not part of the official programme, and what was the programme? She wanted her people to receive her in Okrika. There was no plan, there was no protocol arrangement, nothing. We just had to quickly arrange protocol to take her to the place. But to do that we wanted to also show her, as part of her own programme, not our programme, was to show her the projects we had done in Okrika. So we took her to the Rufus Ada-George ring road in Okrika which we started and completed and then somewhere wesaw a health centre and a primary school and I said stop, let me show her this health centre.We looked at the health centre and we were satisfied. At the primary school, there were houses around the primary school too close for comfort, no football field, no playground, no space at all around the school and I turned to the wife of the President and said ‘Your Excellency Ma, we have not finished with this building, we would buy the houses that are surrounding the primary school and demolish them’.
Once she heard the word 'demolish', the wife ofthe President flared up and took the microphone from me and started all sorts of diatribes that I won’t mention here for the respect i have for the office of the wife of the President. When she finished, I felt that it is wrong to confront the wife of the President publicly. When she finished, I withdrew and walked into the bus. When we got to the groundof the reception which was not part of our programme, which she just included by herself,I came down from the bus and went to sit in one of the primary schools. That is where she said my wife met me and I never and will never, there was not even a public, how did thewife of the President know that my wife met me and I pushed her away when she was supposed to be in a public ceremony. Was she standing with me and my wife in that primary school and saw me pushed my wife away? So itis important that you get to know this and it is important that the public knows that the altercation between myself and the wife of the President was as a result of providing services to her place, the Okrika people because you must deal with the issue of paedophiles. If you build a primary school and the place is surrounded by people who are cooking and selling and buying, that is not a conducive atmosphere for learning and we did not say we would come there with caterpillars and demolish, we say we would buy the houses from the people and pay them off to be able to get a football field and provide playground for the children and fence off the school so that wecan protect them from paedophiles, that was what happened."
Governor Amaechi also spoke on the issue of Nyesom Wike, the Minister of State for Education whom he nominated for appointmentas Minister.
“I hear you also visited Nyesom Wike. I try not to talk about Wike. I say so because he is my subordinate, I try not to talk about him but I hear you visited him. Why I won’t talk about him is that Nyesom Wike, his second tenure as Obio Akpor Council Chairman was by the grace of God but I was the architect of that second term. Nyesom Wike was appointed Chief of Staff by me. Nyesom Wike as a Minister of State, I nominated him. I was under pressure bythe President to drop him, I refused. The President persuaded me to drop him and bring a woman but I refused. I hear he is going all over town saying I didn’t appoint him. I didn’t appoint him, the President appointed him but I nominated him to be a minister him as the Chairman of Nigeria Governors’ Forum. I did butyou know, character doesn’t come easily, character is a very difficult thing and I am a man of character”, Amaechi said.
Earlier, the leader of the delegation, Rt. Rev. James Aye Oruwori said they came because they needed the governor’s permission to intervene in the prolonged crisis in the state and the dispute between the governor and the First Lady.
They said they took the challenge to intervene in the crisis without external influence, having also visited First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, to restore the peace that existed in the state.
Rt. Rev. James Aye Oruwori said: “On behalf of the Niger Delta Bishops’ Forum, we came to visit with you (Amaechi). We want to first of all appreciate your gracious approval of our coming. Summarily, to say why we are here, we, before I go into that, let me please say thatour coming is not influenced by any person, ourcoming is not sponsored by any person but because in a home where there are fathers, peace is always maintained and because we have observed that there had been some challenges to the people of Rivers State then tothe entire Nigeria, we feel agitated in our spirits.
“It is not an exaggeration to say that we have been praying but then prayer without faith is classified as dead and it is on this note we have taken upon ourselves to make a move to seek for peace. The scripture says precisely in Matthew 5:9 that ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they are the children of God”.
“The best thing to do, we felt is to first of all come to you and to say we would want to intervene in this matter believing that there is nothing impossible with God. We just feel that if this matter is allowed to escalate, the matter is something that will not affect only we that are living but even our children that will be born tomorrow”

http://saharareporters.com/news-page/my-problem-patience-jonathan-governor-amaechi

I hope dis makes front page. Being f2c is a privilege i knew wuld cum one day. Tnx dad, mum nd siblings 4 ur support.

@op i dnt want to sound one sided here so i'll try my best to be impartial. Amaechi is a governor i have admired so much, in fact if given d opportunity i'll vote him in a third time but i fear he has "over-shown" his arrogance. Mrs patience is d first lady and mother of the nation but i fear she is so involved in politicking rather than nation building.
My point: They both have faults and we know that but i see "pride" as the only reason they cant reconcile hence roads that cut across oyigbo, intels, eneka etc would be "under construction" until my able governor steps down.

emmysenior: It is so funny how we tend to judge others by their actions and only judge ourselves by our intentions...

Mr Governor! You've your share of flaws as well, admit it, beg and apologise.

And also, rearrange your philosophy and stop been arrogant.

Thanks.

Apologies to who? To jesus, I guess. Wonder shall never end.

LFJ:

Apologies to who? To jesus, I guess. Wonder shall never end.

The one from Okrika O, not Nazareth

Amaechi can you shut up your mouth and be humble for a day. Is too much for you in this country. Every day Amaechi, Amaechi. Is it what River people gave you mandate to do for them

because when you spoke with the wife of the President she spoke publicly. She said and I concede to her when she said she is my mother. As wife of the President who is the head of government and head of the nation, she is my mother and you expect that as my mother she should be able to protect her son. No mother takes away a Police Commissioner to the detriment of her son, so when next you see my mother, please tell her that she should try and protect her son.

These bishop don get assignment o

:oMr amechi, give respect to your boss and help rivers people. Aren't you tired of every day wahara? Haba!!!

hmmm, we do have leaders indeed, who now quarrel over wife pushing

SMH

"so when next you see my mother, please tell her that she should try and protect her son"
do We really have mothers who takes care of their children in politics

E be like say ameachi don fall in love wt grammer

The First Lady disgusts me.

I tot amaechi case is over, not again

These fools are burning down their own states.

The Ijaw president is harassing their governors.

The Hausa in the North are bombing them.

Yet, they still find the time to attack the Yoruba for welcoming them with open arms and deporting touts and distrubed individuals.

Igbos are very good at making enemies, not good at making friends.

I dey come, make i go call people make dem come see.

See guyz...Amaechi shud know dat madam first lady doesn't av rto b inside d classroom with him to know that he pushed his wife....she has enough secret service informants..besides, was he so so alone?...secondly,pushing his wife might not be physical,it could be idiomatic...I know our first lady has a limited vocabulary,just like many of us..so she use dthe word push..bt even then Amaechi strikes me as someone that could actually push his wife...cos he was so so vexd that he left the programme and went to sit in a simple class room built beside paedophiles...lol...also, mayb his wife told madam that "I. Beg him,but he pushed me away o"...now Amarchi needs to let us know where d problem is coming from...is it d okrika school story? Or d obio-Akpor council story? Or d NGF story? Or the presidential slot story? Or the rivers state versus Bayelsa oil blocks story? Or the open criticism of GEJ story? Or what really?...truly dis bishops need to go on a mountain for 40days fast...www.ystnonline.com for your anti crime red button

So amazing how much of a subordinate Amaechi feels an Honourable Minister is to him and why it's so demeaning to talk about him, Yet he expects the President And Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces to make him a topic!
What I see each time he talks is arrogance, it's this same Wike he said does not have the capacity to be the governor that he claimed to have made a council chairman twice, appointed Chief of staff and also nominated for ministerial position against all odds.
Going to the media to talk down on the First family and still claim you have great respect for them is talking from both sides of the mouth.

This Amaechi guy is always catching my fancy, but the first lady shouldn't have said any demeaning word to an elected governor because she is the wife of the president, but in all of this I want this rivers crises thing to end as soon as possible, I know say one dey I go be the first to comment

nofij: I hope dis makes front page. Being f2c is a privilege i knew wuld cum one day. Tnx dad, mum nd siblings 4 ur support.

@op i dnt want to sound one sided here so i'll try my best to be impartial. Amaechi is a governor i have admired so much, in fact if given d opportunity i'll vote him in a third time but i fear he has "over-shown" his arrogance. Mrs patience is d first lady and mother of the nation but i fear she is so involved in politicking rather than nation building.
My point: They both have faults and we know that but i see "pride" as the only reason they cant reconcile hence roads that cut across oyigbo, intels, eneka etc would be "under construction" until my able governor steps down.

Nonesenze...

SlyIg: Nonesenze...

Ure as foolish as ur name....cheap brat. U cnt dare tell my PA that

eeya, Amaechi don tire for dis wahala, hin want peace. Bishops can you deliver dat for him? plz help him.

Why do we love to treat the symptom instead of the ailment itself, in this country?
Let there be a legislation barring the use of the word, practice directly or indirectly,by representatives or proxy, the title "first lady", whether at the Federal, state, local govt council or any organisation or institution of govt.
Why would Dame Jonathan try to direct Amaechi? Is she the Rivers people whose mandate he holds in trust?
Last time, it was Suswam's wife that went to a prison and granted "clemency" to inmates. In her capacity as what? First lady?
The constitution did not mention the word " first lady", either expressly or impliedly. So where are these people deriving their powers from?
If a man cannot rein in on his wife, why seek to govern a country or state? How can a man depose to an oath to protect the constitution, only to stand same upside down and violate it with impunity?
Are we aware that wives of military and para-military ogas @ d top are now first ladies in such institutions? Wives of ministers are not left out too.
We are gradually evolving into a monarchy without being aware, cos one day, we shall witness a "first son" and successor-in-title.