Former chief of staff at the Rivers State Government House, Chief Tony Okocha, has said he had no intention of maligning the former minister of transportation, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, in the newly published personal memoir, ‘Through The Slippery Slopes Of Rivers State Politics’.
Okocha, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was chief of staff during the second tenure of Amaechi as Rivers State governor from 2011 to 2015.
He spoke yesterday while addressing journalists after the public presentation of the book in Port Harcourt.
“The truth of the matter is that I said I was encapsulating my personal experiences. Part of my experiences in life and particularly in the flaring of politics will be incomplete without the mention of Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi; His Excellency.
“I am also of the APC slangs right now. Hitherto, he was the leader and I was saying to us in the book; the leadership failures, the ineptitude, the dictatorship of a man laid to the running of our party aground.
“I said all those clearly but without the intention of maligning his person. I was careful, I am a civil, I am coordinated. So, I used words that I would have assessed that are not going to infringe on anybody’s right. Like I said, I am open to criticism,” he said.
Okocha said one of the reasons he decided to write the personal memoir was to prove to people that he does not belong to the class of professional politicians, but an intellectual.
He added: “Whatever intellectual work anybody does, if he misses the target of intellectual questions and future recourse, it should be thrown into the trashcan.
“We want to prove a point so that you won’t see us as professional politicians and troublemakers; that we can also go into intellectuality.”
