Governor of Imo state, Rochas Okorocha, says some of the decisions taken by the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole have affected the party negatively, and therefore, don’t have the support of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Okorocha is one of the APC governors said to be dissatisfied with the leadership of the party over the difficulty he is experiencing in his bid to have Uche Nwosu, his son-in-law, succeed him.
Speaking after meeting with President Buhari on Thursday, Okorocha said the president wasn’t aware of what Oshiomhole is doing in some of the states and which has affected our party negatively.
“From my understanding from Mr. President, there is no such directive for Oshiomhole to do anything illegal or create any sort of injustice,” he said.
“So, Oshiomhole is on his own in this whole thing. There is no presidency’s support for him to refused candidate those who won elections and give wrong candidates who didn’t win election. This is the matter and I will simply say that he is not with the consent of the presidency, he is on his own.
“”I also requested that Oshiomhole must learn to respect the rule of law and obey court orders where they apply. This issue of treating court orders as tissue papers must stop, it doesn’t reflect the image of our party, he must act quickly to fix the integrity of this party because his coming in ought to have brought joy into the party and not sadness.”
Asked if the party was disintegrating, the Governor said, “Well, APC will not disintegrate for as long as the person, Muhammadu Buhari is still the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and remains the leader of this party. So we cannot give that credit to the chairman.”
On if the party would submit the name of Hope Uzodinma, a governorship aspirant in the state, to INEC and its implications, Okorocha said, “He can’t! I don’t think the national working committee will do that because in the first place, the National Working Committee sent a 13-man delegation who conducted election and 12 of them signed proven that Uche Nwosu won the election with 265,000 votes as against Hope Uzodinma who got less than 7,000 votes; so they can’t do that.”
On his part, Oshiomhole has vowed not to do what he considers improper in order to keep his job.
“Let me say that if there is a choice between what I believe is right and mortgaging that conscience in order to keep the job, I will have no difficulty resolving it in favour of my conscience,” Oshiomhole had said on Wednesday.