APC sends warning to Gov. Rochas

It appears there is no remedy in sight for the travails of the chairman of the Progressive Governors’ Forum (PGF) and Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha.

This is especially as the national leadership of his All Progressives Congress (APC) has likened him to a man who has fallen into a ditch and should be wise enough to know that the best thing to do is to stop digging further.

Okorocha saw himself losing control of APC structure in his state to party stakeholders in Imo State led by his own deputy governor, Prince Eze Madumere, during the recent ward, local government and state congresses of the ruling party.

He had following the outcome of the congresses continued to kick and cry by openly attacking the John Odigie-Oyegun led national leadership of the APC.

Apparent angry with the development, the party in a strong worded statement on Wednesday by its National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, and entitled “Governor Rochas Okorocha’s libellous attacks on our party and its leaders,” called on Okorocha to try and be sensible.

The statement read, “In recent weeks, the Imo State Governor, H.E. Rochas Okorocha, has made libellous attacks on our Party and its leaders a daily occurrence. Hardly a day passes by without Governor Okorocha verbally assaulting our National Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun and other Party leaders over the recently concluded Congresses in Imo State.

“In an advertorial published in the Daily Trust Newspaper of June 11, 2018 and titled in part: “Let The Truth Speak For Itself” which was signed by a known associate of Governor Okorocha, one Hon. Ireagwu Obioma, who styles himself as ‘Acting Secretary, Imo APC’, a number of false claims were made against the Party.

“The import of the allegations was that the Party was aware of a court order preventing it from conducting the Imo State Congress following receipt of a copy of the so-called court injunction which directed it to maintain status quo.

“But nothing can be further from the truth. Even the published documents in the advertorial do not support this position and in fact gave a lie to the governor’s version of events, that the Party was duly served and prevented from going ahead with the Congress in Imo state.

“A cursory look at the published court papers revealed that the Party was served the so-called court rulings on May 18, 2018, while the Ward and Local Government Congresses which produced the recently inaugurated Party executives from the state was held on May 5th and 14th, 2018 respectively, four days before the court ruling was issued.

“In fact, we strongly believe that the court ruling being paraded as injunction does not serve Governor Okorocha’s interest. At the time of the ruling a new set of Party executives had been validly elected, consequently the court ruling directing that the status quo is maintained, actually means that no one should interfere with the newly elected APC party executives in the state.

“Also in the advertorial, a so-called internal Party memo was published, which purportedly showed that we were aware of the pendency of the legal issues involving the congresses in Imo and Abia States. The published ‘memo’ by the agents of the Imo State Governor is fake. No such memo was generated by our Party. A casual look will reveal the inconsistency of the published document.