Rivers government has filed a new criminal charge against Amaechi and Tonye Cole for the sale of state assets.

Zacchaeus Adangor, Rivers attorney-general who confirmed the lawsuit while speaking to ThisDay, accused the two politicians of selling off state assets.

The Rivers government has filed a fresh criminal charge against former governor of the state and ex-minister of transportation, Rotimi Amaechi and governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state, Tonye Cole.

Zacchaeus Adangor, Rivers attorney-general who confirmed the lawsuit while speaking to ThisDay, accused the two politicians of selling off state assets.

The lawsuit comes after Governor Nyesom Wike constituted a seven-man panel to probe Amaechi over the alleged withdrawal of N96 billion from the state’s treasury during Amaechi’s tenure as governor.

The panel investigated issues surrounding the sale of Omoku Gas Turbine, Afam Gas Turbine, Trans Amadi Gas Turbine, Eleme Gas Turbine, Olympia Hotel, and the contract award for the execution of the Mono Rail Project.

In other news,

Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, President of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has said that past governments were more sympathetic to the plight of lecturers.

Speaking at the unveiling of 50 tertiary textbooks published by Nigerian authors under the sponsorship of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) in Abuja on Thursday, January 5, Osodeke shared some of their experiences under military governments.

He said;

““Thank you very much for this honourable minister and all of us who are present here today. I want to thank my colleagues for raising the issues and I think it is very important. I will just say a little thing about what is TETFUND and how did it originate?

“In 1992, the union was on strike and negotiating; how we used to do then few years ago with Obafemi and co, and when we finished, the government said how can we fund it and we said challenge us, we will tell you how to fund this agreement. And they challenged ASUU, it didn’t take three days and we came up with this idea of TETFUND, which was accepted by government, then military.

According to Osodeke, there is need to reposition and expand the education tax net to bring about more resources for tertiary education institutions.

“I have seen that the military are even more sympathetic. Then TETFUND came into place. The decree was signed 1993. ASUU had to go on strike the third time to ensure that TETFUND board is funded and the money was released.”