The Governor of Imo State, Rochas Okorocha, has accused the National
Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Chief John Oyegun, of
collaborating with the National Organising Secretary of the party, Sen.
Osita Izunaso, to cause problem in the state chapter of the party.
Okorocha,
who accused Oyegun of being on “a vendetta mission against him”
following his position on the protracted tenure elongation for the
national leadership of the party, insisted he (Okorocha) remained the
face of the APC in the South-East.
Okorocha spoke in a statement issued on Friday by his Chief Press Secretary, Sam Onwuemedo.
He
challenged the members of the party fighting him to allow party
congresses to hold in the 305 wards in the state than to “run to Abuja
to manipulate the process.”
The statement read in part, “The
so-called Imo stakeholders can only ‘cage’ Governor Rochas Okorocha like
they have claimed in the media in the offices of the National Chairman
of the party, Chief John Oyegun and the National Organising Secretary of
the Party, Chief Osita Izunaso, who are on vendetta mission against the
governor over his innocent and patriotic stand on the issue of tenure
elongation.
“And in any case, only ingrates can claim caging the
man God used to uplift them politically. All those in the insolvent
group called coalition are all beneficiaries of Okorocha’s political
successes in Imo.”
The Imo State governor said he thought that
the outcome of the Anambra State governorship election would have made
some of the NWC members of the party to be in a position to “detach
noise making from reality.”
Okorocha further stressed that the recently held APC ward congress in the state was marred by confusion and controversies.
In
another statement, the governor stated that the state’s Independent
National Electoral Commission had released the report of the congress,
which he said had confirmed that sensitive materials, including result
sheets, were not provided during the election.
It claimed that
the state’s INEC Administrative Secretary, Mr. T.O.N. Ongele, confirmed
that the exercise was characterised, “in its entirety”, with confusion
and controversies.
The statement quoted the Electoral Officer for
Mbaitoli Local Government Council, Mary Odilinye, as saying that INEC
staff were redeployed to various party officers to monitor the exercise
but that on reaching there, the different party offices were locked up.
