Governor Rochas Okorocha seems now to be involved in quarrels more than governance. Just some days ago, he released a statement blasting his immediate predecessor, Ikedi Ohakim who had criticized his style of governance and policies. This was after his ‘show of shame’ with Governor Obiano of Anambra state a couple of weeks ago.
Okorocha is on it again, this time, he faces Former Deputy Speaker of House of Reps, Hon. Emeka Ihedioha who also, had criticized Okorocha’s policies especially, this second tenure, which Ihedioha said were counter-productive and shallow.
The Imo State Governor, in retaliation, trying to incarcerate the political personality of Ihedioha stated that the reason PDP lost in the 2105 election was because Ihedioha “took” the ticket.
Still through his Chief Press Secretary, Sam Onwuemeodo, Okorocha said on Sunday in Owerri that Ihedioha and others who criticized him were dead to Imo politics and sought to revive their relevance by criticizing him.
His statement read in part: “again, we have also decided not to be reacting to Chief Ihedioha’s constant media attacks on Governor Okorocha, because we have discovered that they do all these to give outsiders the erroneous impression that they are still relevant in Imo politics, when in actual fact, they have all gone into political oblivion.
“The fact is that Chief Ihedioha sustained his growth in politics from 2003 to 2015 through name-dropping and that ugly development ended in 2015.
“When he took the ticket of the PDP for the 2015 guber election, everybody knew that the party had denied itself the needed impact it would have made in that election.
“At the end of the election, he could only have the three local governments of Mbaise where he comes from, out of the 27 local governments in the state.
“And today, he does not have any other name to drop. And if he runs for councillorship in his ward today, he will fail woefully.
“In 2003, he dropped the name of Atiku Abubakar to grab the ticket of the party and then went to the House of Representatives.
“He also continued to drop the name of Goodluck Jonathan until that gimmick was forced to stop in 2015.
“He is a brief-case politician and Imo people always have reservations for such politicians. He is disconnected from the people unlike Okorocha who is glued to the people.
“They are two different scenarios. Let him state what he did for his Mbutu ward, his Federal Constituency and Imo people in general for the twelve years he was in the House of Representatives and ended up as the Deputy Speaker of that House.
“Let him also state what the PDP governments achieved for the twelve years they governed the state. They don’t talk about those things because they know that those years were wasted. They should find a way of connecting themselves to the people because media interviews do not vote in elections.”