Dame Judith Amaechi, wife of former Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi, has vehemently refuted allegations made by the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, Nyesom Wike, that she received N4 billion monthly from the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) for her Empowerment Support Initiative (ESI). In a strong statement released through her media assistant, Dike Bekwele, Amaechi dismissed Wike’s claim as “utterly baseless falsehood” and issued a direct challenge: Wike must publicly produce evidence from the NDDC forensic audit report or resign his ministerial position.
Wike had made the explosive claim during a live television interview, urging President Bola Tinubu to publish the full NDDC forensic audit report and promising to resign if his allegations against Amaechi’s wife were not contained within it. Judith Amaechi’s rebuttal describes Wike’s accusation as not only false but also “wild and unfounded,” designed purely to tarnish her reputation and that of ESI for political gain.
The statement clarified that ESI’s collaboration with the NDDC involved “counterpart funding,” a standard practice in development partnerships, and insisted that all such funding was transparent and open to public scrutiny. Amaechi’s team stated, “There is absolutely no iota of veracity in the allegation made by Mr. Wike against Dame Amaechi and the Empowerment Support Initiative (ESI). Dame Amaechi did not and has never received four billion naira monthly payments (₦4,000,000,000.00) from the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC.”
Furthermore, Judith Amaechi challenged the notion that she or ESI could have been indicted in an NDDC forensic audit report that has not yet been officially released to the Nigerian public. She labeled Wike’s assertion as “both absurd, baseless, and a mere figment of Mr. Wike’s imaginations,” underscoring the lack of credible evidence behind the FCT Minister’s public pronouncements.
This direct confrontation between the wives of two prominent Rivers State political figures highlights the ongoing bitter rivalry between their husbands, Rotimi Amaechi and Nyesom Wike. The dispute over alleged NDDC funds underscores the deep-seated animosity that continues to play out in the public sphere, often involving accusations of corruption and challenges to integrity. The ball is now in Wike’s court to either substantiate his claims with verifiable evidence or face the demand for his resignation.
