I Don’t Know My Successor Yet – Amaechi

Rivers State Governor and Chairman of Nigerian Governors’ Forum, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi says he is not in any position to know who becomes his successor, adding that only God knows.
He said he would personally pray for God to make His choice on who becomes the next state governor.
He spoke at St. Barth’s Anglican Church, Bera Deanery during Senator Magnus Abe’s Thanksgiving Service in Gokana Local Government Area of the state at the weekend.
Senator Abe had organized the thanksgiving service to express appreciation to God for surviving the attack on him by the police during a Save Rivers Movement (SRM) rally in Rumuola, Port Harcourt.
Amaechi said the next governor would be somebody of reliable character who would continue after him to transform the state.
He said: “You must prepare for the next election so that you will teach them a lesson, and the only way to teach them a lesson is first to pray to God, after praying, go and register if you don’t have a voter’s card. If you have a voter’s card, wait for the election and vote against PDP.
“I have not started praying for who will take over from me. When I start, you will know. The prayer for now is ‘God, we want you to deliver APC, God, we want you to lead us to build a party called APC’.
“The moment we are convinced that we are finished with that, I will put my knees again on the ground, and I will tell my wife and my pastors. Usually, when we go to God, we don’t go with a name, if you go with a name, you are not asking God to make a decision, you are telling God ‘I have made my decision’, God please, make this decision for me so that we don’t meet failure in the course of the struggle, and once God chooses whoever will be governor, I believe that all of us will work together to support the person because all these things we have done so far, if we don’t get the right person in, they would collapse. They will spend four years stealing money before they will remember that you exist because we know them. We have documents, they have served under us.”
On Abe’s condition before he was flown abroad for treatment, Governor Amaechi said: “I was the first to tell him to travel because of his condition.”
Governor Amaechi described Senators and members of the House of Representatives who came for Senator Magnus Abe’s thanksgiving service as loyal friends of the senator.
According to him, Magnus Abe is a reliable character, and recalled that he met him in the state House of Assembly.
“I thank the Senators and the House of Representatives members, and I thank those of you who have come. It shows friendship, it shows loyalty to friendship and I believe that being loyal to friendship means that that person will pay you back when it is your turn.
“I met Magnus Abe in the House of Assembly, and I found him to be a man of good character, and I said to myself, if we must move forward, we must look for men of good character”.
Earlier, Senator Magnus Abe had said he was grateful to God for sparing his life, and thanked all the guests for coming to join him and his family in appreciating God.
Abe, at the thanksgiving, displayed the doctor’s report from the Princess Grace Hospital, London confirming that he was shot.
The state police command under the immediate past commissioner, Mr. Mbu Joseph Mbu had denied that his men shot the senator.
The senator said: “Anybody who says I do not have any cause to thank God, is an idiot. I just want all of you to join me to thank God for saving my life. People were here, busy organising demonstrations, to show that nothing happened to me. I do not begrudge them, because we live in a society where human lives are not valued.
“If it is where human lives are valued, nobody would do that, when someone has gone through the pains I went through. When I got to a society where they value human lives (United Kingdom), their reaction was quite different from the reactions from my home country. That is the difference between Nigeria and places that value human lives,” he said.
The Bishop, Diocese of Ogoni (Anglican Communion), Rt. Rev. Solomon Gberegbara, in his sermon, thanked God for saving Abe’s life, and prayed for His continuous protection to the family of the ex-Rivers SSG

R-L: Immediate past Attorney-General of Edo State, Dr Osagie Obayuwana, Chief Executive Officer, Arise Consultancy Service Limited, Prof. Assisi Asobie and Lagos-based lawyer, Mr Femi Falana, at the celebration of lives and times of Festus Iyayi and Baba Omojola, foremost revolutionaries and Pan-Afrcanists in Abuja last Thursday.