Rivers State Governor, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi has reiterated his stance on zoning the governorship seat next year to areas which have not produced the state Chief Executive.
He called on the people of Ikwerre Ethnic nationality to shelve their ambition to aspire for the governorship of Rivers State as that will be unfair to other groups in the state.
Amaechi, who declared his stance at the weekend at the one year anniversary of the Amayanabo of Abonnema, King Disrael Gbobo Bob-Manuel at Abonnema, said, “For me, I will support only zone where we have agreed such candidate will come from, and I hope and pray it will not go to Ikwerre.
“As an Ikwerre mean, whether Ikwerre has population or not, they should bid farewell to the governorship for others who have not gotten. Where the governor will come from I don’t know. I’am not God. I don’t know where the next governor will come from”, Amaechi maintained.
Governor Amaechi, who responded to a speech by Alabo Tonye Graham-Douglas, who had recalled that there had been a subsisting agreement on rotating the governorship – between the up land and riverine said, he was not aware of such agreement.
The Rivers State Chief Executive, however, said “I was too young, I wasn’t in that meeting. If it’s zoning , I agree with zoning but where it will be zoned, I don’t know”.
Nonetheless, he said that a meeting of all stakeholders will be held to agree on the zone, maintaining that any zone that has produced governor before now is ruled out.
He used the occasion to call on all Kalabari sons and daughters to join in the fight to return their ceded land and oil wells back to the state.
The governor was of the view that any Kalabari son or daughter who refuses to fight against the annexation of Soku oil Wells to Bayelsa is not from the Kingdom.
He added, “we want to see the young men stand up – for their rights. You cannot be a Kalabari man and they take your oil well, and you say they should take it. Then you are not Kalabari man, whether it’s PDP or APC”.
The Chairman of Nigerian Governor’s Forum (NGF) congratulated the Abonnema Monarch, promising that in the next one month, his stool will be elevated after due consultations in the area.
The plan to elevate the stool, Amaechi further disclosed, has been under consideration, stating that adequate consultations has to be done.
“I have almost concluded but we were thinking that if somebody else is made a first class, what happens to the stool of Amanyanabo of Kalabari?”
Earlier, Former Minster of Aviation and Chairman of the occasion, Alabo Tonye Graham-Douglas had demanded that the stool of Amayanabo of Kalabari be made “classless”, while other traditional stools in the area be re-classified.
On the governorship seat in the state, the Kalabari-born politician said “I’ts now the turn of Riverine Ijaws or the Ogonis”.
He added that “turn-by-turn” rotation of governorship still subsists, recalling that an agreement had been reached by stakeholders some years back on the matter.
Alabo Graham-Doulas lauded Governor Amaechi for his doggedness in getting back the ceded Soku Oil Wells to Bayelsa State, while challenging Kalabari indigenes to lend support and resist the annexation of their territory to neighbouring state.
In the same vein, King Bob-Manuel thanked the governor for his interest to develop the Kalabari Kingdom, most especially the numerous road projects in Akuku-Toru, and pleaded on him to complete them before the end of his tenure.