Expdonaloaded News; Okorocha’s interview rattles S’East APC

THERE appears to be an uproar in the All Progres­sives Congress (APC) in the South-East following the interview of Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State exclusively published in Sunday Sun yesterday. Okorocha had in the in­terview said that Ndigbo should blame themselves for losing out in the key ap­pointments made by Presi­dent Muhammadu Buhari.
But the South-East spokesman of APC, Mr Osita Okechukwu, picked holes with the governor’s claim. He said “Okorocha should take responsibility for Igbo exclusion in the appointments, rather than passing the buck to Ndig­bo.” The South-East APC spokesman claimed that Governor Okorocha neither truly campaigned for Bu­hari nor APC. “I am sorry to comment on the blame game being played by Okorocha; for his interview can be clas­sified as Okorocha Recue Mission from the less than five per cent score in the 2015 presidential election from the entire South East. “All one can say is that to the best of my knowl­edge, he neither truly cam­paigned for Buhari nor the APC. “Methinks that while we blame Ndigbo for putting all our eggs in one basket, we should blame our lead­ers who genuinely didn’t campaign for Buhari nor APC candidates in their domain. But Okorocha, through his Chief Press Secretary, Sam Onwuemeodo said Okechukwu is not the rec­ognised spokesman of APC in the South-East. “The attention of the Imo State governor Ro­chas Okorocha has been drawn to a press release by one Osita Okechukwu who claimed to be the zonal spokesman for APC South East , leveraging on the Sunday Sun interview by the lmo governor to black­mail him. “The truth is that the man is not the publicity secre­tary of APC in the South East. This claim can be verified from the leaders of the party in the zone and for him to say all that against the governor means he must be one of those politi­cians who can damage any­body to achieve their goal. “The level of impunity brought to lmo before and during the election by the PDP-led federal govern­ment then never happened in any other place in this country; yet Okorocha fought to put these PDP elements on their toes and prevented them from re­turning the kind of figures they returned in 2011. If he needed an appointment from Mr President he could pursue that ambition with­out abusing anybody. “One had expected the lgbos in APC to drop the mentality of believing that they must pull someone down to rise. Governor Okorocha ran one of the most robust campaigns for President Buhari and APC in this country.