Osita Okechukwu
The Director-General, Voice of Nigeria (VON), Osita Okechukwu, has said that the Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha can leave the All Progressives Congress (APC) if he so desires, as the crisis in the South-east zone of the party took another turn on Monday.
Speaking while addressing journalists before the inauguration of Imo state chairmen of the party at the APC national secretariat in Abuja on Monday, Okechukwu, who was President Muhammadu Buhari's appointee, said the actions and inaction of Okorocha caused APC setback in the last four years in the South-east region.
According to
PREMIUM Times, Okechukwu who disclosed that the recent development where the governor’s camp lost in the party’s congresses followed a plan to reposition the APC to win elections in the South-east, declared on Monday that without Okorocha, the party will win the 2019 general elections, including parliamentary seats and governorship seats in the South-east.
“At least there are more than 60 political parties now, Okorocha is free to join any of his choice. Though, we are not forcing him to leave, what we are saying is we have taken the leadership out of his hands because he was playing God,” he told the journalists.
“He was personalising power, so the majority of the leadership and membership of the APC in the South-east said ‘Thank you, so far so good enough is enough’.
“So what I am just saying is that he was at liberty to leave APC. But let nobody anywhere think that the APC will lose because we have retrieved the party from him. No. APC is the winner as a political party. Mr president is going to get more votes, we are going to win more parliamentary seats, more governorship seats without him.
“In my place when the bird is dancing on the main road, it means there is a drummer in the bush and I am pointing at the drummer of all that is happening in the South-east.
“But luckily, majority, over 90 per cent of the leadership and membership of the APC in the South-east has said enough is enough to our former leader, Owelle Rochas Okorocha.”
When asked to explain what he meant by Okorocha being behind crisis rocking the party in the region, Okechukwu said: “From day one, he kept us where we are in the APC government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria because in that meeting where he insisted he must run for residency, he was virtually aware that there is a convention called zoning. He is not a small boy, he is a brilliant person. A brilliant person with high business acumen.
“We thank the people of Imo State, (APC National Organising Secretary, Osita) Izunanso and others, the people we recruited, we retrieved from him. They did so well. They have killed a lion.”
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