Rivers PDP alleges plot to recall overseas scholarship students

(Nigeria) The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Rivers State Chapter has again accused the Governor Rotimi Amaechi administration of not keeping its promises to Rivers people and of plot to recall overseas scholarship students.

The PDP is reacting to the alleged cries and lamentation of students of the state origin sent to the United Kingdom to study medicine by the State Government through the Rivers State Sustainable Development Agency, RSSDA since 2010, who have just been given a marching order by the agency to come home when they are yet to start their medical programme, MBBS, for which scholarship was offered.

State PDP Chairman, Mr Felix Obuah, in a statement by his media aid, Mr Jerry Needam, in Port Harcourt on Sunday, while faulting the move by the RSSDA to force them back home and the stoppage of payment of their upkeep and accommodation allowances with effect from August, 2014, said that it was not only deceitful and a breach of contract but also a fraud, as millions of naira had been voted for the programme.

The party also wants both the RSSDA and Amaechi to take into cognizance the far reaching implications of forcing these students to return home without clearing their indebtedness to the UK institutions, a criminal case which can make them (the institutions) to blacklist the students and denying them the possibility of travelling abroad for further studies or any other business in future.

Saying it has been vindicated in its allegation that Amaechi had emptied the state treasury on sponsorship of the All Progressives Congress, APC, which he has consistently denied, the party wonders what other reason could compel both Amaechi and his pet Agency, RSSDA to stop the students on state scholarship halfway rather than lack of funds as claimed by the agency.

“Now the students have not completed their programmes neither has Amaechi gotten the trained and qualified personnel to keep his so called super health centres afloat, yet he wants those sent out to acquire these skills to come home without qualifying simply because the State is broke.

“We are therefore demanding that the move to recall these students back home without completing their programme be stopped forthwith, or all the billions of naira already claimed to have been spent on these aggrieved deceived Rivers scholarship beneficiaries be refunded to Rivers people.

“All this while, we thought this idea of starting a project and not finishing it before jumping to the other was only restricted to infrastructural development and now he has extended it to human development, we find it unacceptable,” the party said.