Rivers Assembly approves Wike’s N10 billion loan’s request

Kunle Awosiyan |

Rivers State House of Assembly has given approval to Governor Nyesom Wike to secure a N10 billion loan from Zenith Bank.

Speaker of the House, Ikuinyi Ibani, said that the fund was meant for rehabilitation of roads and some other projects within the governor’s first 100 days in office.

Prior to the approval the 28 lawmakers present had given their support to the governor to go ahead and taken time to hear from the state’s Ministries of Health, Information and other agencies on their efforts to stop further deaths from consumption of the poisonous local gin otherwise called kai kai or ogogoro

However, Ibani said that the state government had since complied with the Federal Government’s decision to ban the sales of local gin across the country.

But in his argument, a member representing Degema constituency, Farah Dagogo and Ogbona Jones representing Port Harcourt constituency 1, spoke against the outright ban on sale of local gin in the state.

According to him government should find out what was responsible for the death of those that consumed the gin and see how best to resolve the problem.

“Today we are talking of poisonous gin, tomorrow it may be garri or beer. I think we should not encourage outright ban because not all the local gin sold in the market can be said to be poisonous. Efforts should be made to trace the killer gin to address the problem,” he stated.