A former Director-General, Nigeria Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, Dr Dakuku Peterside, and the Chairman of the Ikwerre Local Government Area of Rivers State, Dr Samuel Nwanosike, are on a collision course over governance in the state.

While Peterside said there was high level of unemployment in the state and that the state’s Gross Domestic Product was nothing to write home about, Nwanosike said Governor Nyesom Wike had performed creditably in many areas, especially security.

Peterside and Nwanosike spoke on separate occasions in Port Harcourt, the state capital.

The ex-NIMASA boss said he would continue to speak against the ills of the Wike administration, insisting that the governor had failed the people of the state.

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He stated, “Every Rivers man should be concerned about the quality of governance in Rivers State. Recall that Trans Amadi (in Port Harcourt) used to be the second largest industrial estate in this country. There are statistics to show that at some point, Trans Amadi employed close to 200,000 persons.

“Today, Trans Amadi is a shadow of itself. Our state has consistently occupied the top spot in terms of unemployment. Our GDP is nothing to write home about for a supposed capital of oil and gas activities.

“Should we not be concerned about the ravaging poverty in the land and the hunger?

“Should we not be concerned with the fact that unemployment has caused a spike in insecurity and that soot is killing our people?”

But Nwanosike said Peterside lied in saying that governance in the state under Wike was at its lowest ebb.

Nwanosike stated that the claims by the former NIMASA DG was a display of ignorance, pointing out that many of the companies that left Port Harcourt for Lagos had returned following improved security in the state under the governor.

He said, “It is on record that over 85 per cent of the companies that left Trans Amadi have returned from Lagos.

“Governor Nyesom Wike, through the instrumentality of Internally Generated Revenue, is paying major companies to finish the infrastructural development of Rivers State.”

“Imagine Dakuku Peterside saying that what Wike understands by infrastructural development is only building of bridges.

“He (Peterside) doesn’t think. Nyesom Wike is doing the Trans Kalabari Road. He has sand-filled Abalama. Wike has rebuilt almost all public secondary schools.

“He is building infrastructure in the security, economic and the health sectors.”