The altercations between Imo State Governor, Senator Hope Uzodinma and a former governor of the State, Owelle Rochas Okorocha have continued to deepen with verbal cross fire characterizing the exchanges.
From what Okorocha told Sun, a national daily, Trumpeta learnt that the former governor accused Uzodinma of working for some agents from Abuja to allegedly fight him.
Part of the interview reads “The root cause of my quarrel I can imagine, are two things because I don’t know. The first time when he was declared winner as governor, I went because we said we are in the same party. I said let bygone be bygone and after all, Apostle Paul was a criminal and wrote the best Scripture of the New Testament. Let us work together. I went to him and said to Hope Uzodimma, congratulations, you are now a governor, I like to work with you and I would like to support you. Look at what you should do, number one, as a governor, you would naturally want to lead the party, but please, don’t throw away all the whole structures. If you want to bring your people, at least, divide it 50/50, put the chairman, put some people and give them a sense of belonging. I am not going to run for governor, I don’t even intend to run for Senate again, so you have the state to yourself and I will not bother you. I am not requesting for any appointment. Nothing! I gave him that advice. But I said to him also, you see, I know you have people who have sent you from Abuja to fight me and all those things. Can we now leave them? We are brothers. If the only way you can satisfy them is for you to see that they are fighting me, you can even act it up. God bear me witness. I told him all these things. I said you can act it up, but let’s help our dear people of Imo State. They are in dire need of leadership. Let’s help them; they are in dire need of good governance. Let’s help them. I said number two. But number three, don’t use PDP witch-hunting panel to witch-hunt me. If you want to set a panel, you are now APC, set an APC panel because a PDP state chairman of a party heading a panel can never give me a good judgment. Get lawyers; get people who are neutral to investigate whatever you want to investigate. He promised and he did nothing. The following day, he didn’t pick my calls. I said, what is wrong with this man? He made appointment, nobody was carried along, and rather, he said he was going to recover all stolen property of Imo State. I was so shocked. Again, the governors called us. The governors of APC called us at Plateau Lodge. Hope was there and I was there. The only thing, when I realised that it was envy, was when he said that my house in Imo State was bigger than the state government. I said, what has that gone to do with you? This house that you are talking about, I bought it 20 years ago from Spibat, a construction company. It was an old property and I turned that place into a city. So, what is his problem? But, all said and done, the governors intervened. Fayemi was there, all the governors were there. And before us, Hope Uzodimma told them that he was only doing a panel; that he set up a panel to pacify some of his political supporters who felt they should take Rochas’ neck as political witch-hunt. He did make that statement and that he was not going to make use of that report, that he will just put it under the drawer. He told us this. I said I don’t trust this man. I told Fayermi, I don’t trust this man. Fayemi said no, no, no, he can’t say it before us, no, no, no. Fayemi is alive. And what did he do, he went, cooked up what he called White Paper report. The report was never published for anybody to read, procedures were never published, White Paper was never published, and he said he had exco meeting. So, the exco met and gave the White Paper power to go and seal up the foundation property managed by my wife. And when he got to the foundation property, the commissioner got there, he said why do you shoot? And why do you loot the property you have gone to seal? That was the story of all these. So, there is no… My only problem with Hope Uzodimma is that he lies a lot. Hope Uzodimma lies a lot. If he can remove the lies because whenever he says good morning, I can’t even believe his good morning and good afternoon.”
