{"id":7723,"date":"2025-10-07T11:33:47","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T11:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/?p=7723"},"modified":"2025-10-07T11:33:47","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T11:33:47","slug":"lbas-ll-account-for-stewardship-to-rivers-else-ann-kio-briggs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/2025\/10\/07\/lbas-ll-account-for-stewardship-to-rivers-else-ann-kio-briggs\/","title":{"rendered":"lbas ll account for stewardship to Rivers, else &#8211; Ann- Kio Briggs"},"content":{"rendered":"<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">By\u00a0 \u00a0Magnus Chukwudi, Port Harcourt<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">The people of Rivers State have vowed that the six- month old Sole Administrator Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ekwe lbas retd, must give to them account of how he used their resources for the period of the emergency rule.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Recall,\u00a0 that Civil Society Organizations CSOs, the state legislators, among others, have already demanded to probe lbas&#8217; administration vis-a-vis the state&#8217;s income and expenditure for the period under review.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">This time, a human rights activist and environmental activist Ms Ann-Kio Briggs, has also insisted on that, without which the oil rich state may go to court.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">The outspoken activist made the declaration at the weekend, in an interview session with Daily Echoes Media at Port Harcourt, insisting it&#8217;s the right of the Rivers people to know, how he used their funds, within the period under review.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">&#8220;If Ibas fails to account for his stewardship in Rivers State, we will possibly go to court.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">It must be noted too that, he received allocations on behalf of the state, for six months.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">\u00a0The allocations, we all know were not kept in the Aso Rock Villa.They were being paid into the Rivers State&#8217;s coffers, so when l heard lbas say, he had saved #5.bn\u00a0 for Rivers State, l felt like he had slapped me, like he had slapped the entirety of Rivers State, on top of everything we had gone through.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">For Vice Admiral lbas retd to tell a state that receives\u00a0 more than #5.bn as monthly\u00a0 lnternally Generated Revenue IGR, and more than #5.bn monthly revenue from federal allocation, a state with functional bank accounts already, had savings so, he&#8217;s<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">not being serious,&#8221; she explained.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">&#8220;He can&#8217;t tell us, he received #5.bn in the six months of emergency rule. Up till now, Ibas is yet to tell Rivers people, if he met anything in the state&#8217;s Treasury, when he came.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">On the probability of Ibas, being ex- military officer, the environmental activist noted that, lbas did not come as a military Administrator of Rivers State, but as a man with military background, but\u00a0 retired, before appointment by the President.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Ms Briggs regretted that the Administrator handled the state, more like a military man would, than as an elected Governor of a state.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">&#8220;Vice Admiral lbas, a stranger with military background, despatched purportedly to execute the President&#8217;s mandate, came to our state, and then onward, the state was thrown into a backward turmoil, with all the commissioners removed.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">He removed the Secretary to State Government SSG, the Chief of Staff, only for him to bring other strangers to work with, appointing his own SSG, and Chief of Staff, who is a serving military officer.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">She stated that all the projects Governor Fubara had in hand before he took over, were abruptly abandoned.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">&#8220;Besides that, the question, l have is, when he came to Rivers State, how much did he see? Has he told the people?\u00a0 It would amount to high level of disrespect, if he does not disclose it to us. If he does not, then Governor Fubara will be free, to claim to have left #500.bn in the state&#8217;s Treasury.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Without equivocation she noted. &#8220;No time was l aware that,\u00a0 he interacted with the people of the state, as to per their\u00a0 development plan, what projects they needed, whether he could do them or not.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">There was not discussion. There were no town hall meetings. Ibas was literally dropped from the sky on Rivers people,\u00a0 and the next thing he did, was to remove the Governor&#8217;s pictures. The Governor was not out of the office yet. He was merely being suspended but, still remained the Governor of Rivers State.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">There are many things Ibas has to account for. If we for any reason have to allow what happened here, to fritter away unaccounted for, and should the whole Nigeria allow him go scot free, because he was despatched by the President, other states will suffer similar fate, for the ugly precedence would have been set,\u00a0 Igazetted, and therefore any other President could do it.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By\u00a0 \u00a0Magnus Chukwudi, Port Harcourt The people of Rivers State have vowed that the six- month old Sole Administrator Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ekwe lbas retd, must give to them account of how he used their resources for the period of the emergency rule. Recall,\u00a0 that Civil Society Organizations CSOs, the state legislators, among others, have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2878,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[4901,4898,4900,651,4728,2812,4899],"class_list":["post-7723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-law-crime","tag-despatched","tag-disrespect","tag-equivocation","tag-expenditure","tag-income","tag-purportedly","tag-unaccounted"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7723"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7724,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7723\/revisions\/7724"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}