IN the last few weeks, the issue of a petition written by a group, Save Abia Initiative for Change, SAI4C, to the Economic and Financial Crime Commission, EFCC, against the immediate past governor of Abia State, Chief T. A. Orji, his wife and son accusing them of looting the state’s funds has been raging.
In this interview, the spokesperson of the group, Chief Peter Echeta Eme speaks on why they wrote the petition and the need to see that justice was done in the matter by the anti-graft agency.
Excerpts:
#What is the organisation all about?
Save Abia Initiative for Change (SAI4C) is a voluntary organisation of association of men and women in Abia State whose belief is that the last administration headed by Chief T. A. Orji looted Abia State and disappointed its citizens with impunity, and they are not showing any signs of remorse about it. They feel on top of the world having done so. We in SAI4C said no; we insist that this ill-gotten wealth from Abia State must be recovered. So SAI4C is a voluntary organisation made up of men and women from all walks of life. Many may not even imagine the type of people in the group. Some of our members are from the PDP, APGA, APC and other political parties and even in the civil service.
#When was SAI4C formed?
This group is a child of circumstance. It’s new, it’s not up to six months old. We saw the impunity with which these people have looted Abia State and after they had left, they continued with this impunity from outside. We are doing what we are doing because Abians want this man who has peppered them to be re-peppered. That is the truth. And he is not going to get away with it.
#Some people have doubted if all the things you wrote in your petition are factual?
All of us are in Umuahia. This man (former governor) built Ochendo Close and everybody sees it. There are 20 or 30 solid buildings there.
Where did he get the money? From Umuahia to Apumiri, a little before the Enugu/Port Harcourt Expressway, there is where he called Apumiri-Umudegbe erosion control, the place is usually water-logged and he said they did the job at the cost of N80 million. But I can assure you that we went to Ministry of Environment and got all the ecological projects in Abia State- nine of them- and that job was done twice.
Another startling revelation we got was that the money for the nine projects was put at N1.9 billlion, but they had released about N820 million and N80 million was supposed to have been used for that particular project. Those monies were fully drawn, but go there, you will see nothing. Are you saying this is false? They took a loan of N10.5 billion from a first generation bank. This bank has its branch in Umuahia and they asked the local governments in the state to apply for the loan; each council applying for N500 million. An official of my own local government confirmed it. I will not give the name for security reasons. If you go round all the local governments, you will discover that two schools in each LG were fenced and these were done with N10 million each, making it N20 million. Then you will also see that one or two structures in these local government secretariats were renovated at the cost of N40 million. So, when you add the N20 million and N40 million, it is N60 million. That is all they have to show out of the N500 million loan each local government got.
Again, out of that N40 million given for the renovation of the LG secretariats, each council chairman and his deputy had to take N7 million to pay for their official cars. Go to any of the local government secretariats, you will find out the truth. This is something that happened before everybody in Abia State and nobody will say it is false. But if they are saying it is false, they have a simple duty to Abians-they should come out and tell us the truth. If they say what we have written is not true, let Theodore Ahamefula Orji invite us through the EFCC and we will go there and say it befo
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