Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike, has said the recovery and eventual return of the seemingly lost asset to the state, Legacy 600 aircraft, was a reality, and not mere politics.
Wike, who had embarked on a short trip to London last Friday, spoke after receiving the Legacy 600 aircraft that touched down at the Port Harcourt International Airport, Omagwa in Ikwerre Local Government Area of the State on Tuesday afternoon.
At the brief reception that took place at the airport, there were some cultural displays staged by Rivers women and youths to celebrate the return of the state-owned aircraft secretly abandoned in Germany by the immediate past administration in the state.
Wike explained that it took an intelligence report for his administration to discover such an asset, owned by the Rivers State government.
Wike further said the immediate past administration flew the aircraft to far away Germany, without any record of it made available to his administration.
He said, “To the glory of God, the plane is back and Rivers people can see. Nigerians can see. It is not that we are playing politics.
“All we are saying is that we never knew. Nobody told us until we got intelligence that we have this asset somewhere.”
He recalled that the Legacy 600 Aircraft was purchased by the Dr. Peter Odili’s led administration to serve the interest of Rivers people, but was abandoned with the General Atomics Aerotec in Munich, Germany by the Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Ameachi’s administration since 2012.
“What is very important to all of us here today is that when we came into power in 2015, nobody handed over any report or gave us handover note to let us know where such an asset of the state was, only for us to hear in 2019 that this asset is somewhere,” Wike said.
The governor also stated that so much money was spent by the state government on the aircraft; money that would have been put into other development projects if his administration had known of it quite early.