Okorocha’s Vendetta Gamble With Imo APC

By Declan Emelumba

The frenzy with which Senator Rochas Okorocha has been celebrating his pyrrhic victory at the Federal High Court, Abuja, over the Imo West senatorial primary of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has more than confirmed that the judgment was premeditated. As loquacious as ever, Okorocha has gone to town to thank those who facilitated that travesty of justice. His mention of help from high places, and his speedy embrace of the so-called Rainbow Coalition without any contact with the APC at the grassroots, have given him and his co-conspirators away. But Nigerians are not fooled. Many have recalled the old saying: the witch cried in the night, and the child died at dawn.

One sharp observation came from Sam Amadi, a lawyer, rights activist and politician from Imo State, who is no fan of Governor Hope Uzodimma. In a Facebook post the day after the judgment, Amadi wrote: “Hope Uzodimma may be guilty of many things. But it does not mean he is guilty of everything.” He pointed to the footage of Uzodimma voting on the primaries election day, with his wife by his side and a large crowd of APC members behind him. Then he threw down a simple challenge: “Let us see the evidence of Okorocha’s primary election.”

That may sound academic in a courtroom, but it confirms what APC members in Ideato South, Okorocha’s home, and across Imo State have said all along: he was an absentee aspirant who neither campaigned nor took part in the primary. His son Amen, who swore to the affidavit used to procure this phantom judgment, is not even known to the party.

As Jesus said of Judas, it was written that the Son of Man would be betrayed, but woe unto the man who betrays him. Chief Sam Mbakwe spoke in the same manner about the vexed abandoned property issue, under which Ndigbo were dispossessed of their property in Rivers State. He said that whenever that infamy was mentioned, the man who chaired the Abandoned Properties Implementation Committee, David Mark, would be remembered on the wrong side of history. In like manner, whenever controversial Federal High Court judgments are mentioned, the name of Justice Obiora Egwuatu will be remembered. That he set aside Supreme Court rulings duly cited before him to hand a questionable victory to Okorocha seals his place in the hall of infamy.

What is baffling is the way Okorocha has been moving from one media house to another, gloating over this so-called victory, vilifying the governor and speaking as if the judgment were the final word. Unless he knows something that is not written in the Electoral Act or the Constitution, or unless those pulling his strings have given their puppet overwhelming assurances, Uzodimma retains the right to appeal this judgment all the way to the Supreme Court. Okorocha’s faith in a judgment that cannot stand the test of the law is curious, especially as the Imo APC has already disowned him.

On Channels Television’s Politics Today on Thursday, the very day of the judgment, Okorocha declared: “Hope has never won an election in his life.” The record says otherwise. Uzodimma won the Imo West Senate seat twice and sat in the 7th and 8th Senates. In the 2023 governorship election, he polled 540,308 votes against 71,503 for the PDP and 64,081 for the Labour Party. INEC’s returning officer, Prof. Abayomi Fasina, declared him winner and returned him elected. Now contrast that with Okorocha’s own route to the Senate in 2019. Announcing the Imo West result, the returning officer, Prof. Innocent Ibeawuchi, told the nation: “I declared this thing before under duress; I’m still under duress declaring this one.” INEC initially refused Okorocha a certificate of return. So which of the two men has never truly won an election?

On the same programme, Okorocha said: “There’s no single project initiated by Hope and finished by Hope.” He should ask his own people. The road Okorocha built to his village collapsed, cutting his community off from the rest of Imo and subjecting his people to untold hardship. Three governors, Okorocha included, could not fix the Orlu–Mgbee–Akokwa–Uga federal road, the only accessible route to his village. Uzodimma rebuilt it from end to end, together with the Umuchima Bridge linking Orlu and Ideato, which Okorocha failed to build in all his years as governor and senator. The Auxiliary Bishop of Orlu, Most Rev. Thomas Ifeanyichukwu Obiatuegwu, publicly praised the project and thanked the governor. The road and bridge Okorocha’s own people now use were delivered by the man he mocks.

He went further: “He can’t beat my record. He can’t even get close to it. Not one, one hundredth of my record.” Every Imo person knows that Okorocha’s so-called projects fell into ruin even before he left office. The International Conference Centre, a stone’s throw from Government House, lost its roof, and its ceiling caved in. The Mother and Child Hospital on Douglas Road, Owerri, was left to mechanics, hoodlums and reptiles; it is not fit to be called a poultry farm, let alone a hospital. Chukwuma Nwoha Road, Dick Tiger Road and other urban roads had become swampy bush paths until Uzodimma rebuilt them. And in the name of urban renewal, Okorocha savagely destroyed the piped water system he inherited. It is hard to believe that the Imo of today is the same Imo that Okorocha spent eight years spoiling and pillaging. That old Imo was truly nothing to write home about.

Acting like a bull in a china shop, Okorocha accuses Uzodimma of humiliation and intimidation. That bears the mark of envy and an outsized grudge, which only facts can heal. He has not told Nigerians why security agencies arrested his son-in-law, Uche Nwosu. He has not told Nigerians that the EFCC secured forfeiture orders on properties traced to him, his wife and his daughter. He has not explained the Royal Spring Palm Estate on Akachi Road, Owerri: government land developed and claimed as private property by his wife, Nkechi. He has not explained how Eastern Palm University, built with public funds, came to be claimed as his own until the Uzodimma government recovered it and renamed it K.O. Mbadiwe University. Nor has he mentioned the state panel that found he used soldiers and hoodlums to seize the land of Alvan Ikoku Federal College of Education and demolish 101 staff buildings. He speaks today as a free man only because Uzodimma, against wise counsel, refused to prosecute him and his family for widespread corruption. Okorocha ought to be answering for his record, not comparing it with Uzodimma’s.

Indeed, he already has charges to answer. A Senior Magistrate Court in Abuja has issued a bench warrant against Okorocha and his son Amen, on charges of criminal conspiracy, forgery, perjury and false documents over the primary results he paraded. The police confirmed that they arrested him at the REIZ Continental Hotel in Abuja on 12 October and released him on bail. Yet on live television he insisted: “Never was I arrested.” A man who can obtain a dubious court order while facing forgery charges, and then deny an arrest the police have confirmed, is capable of anything. Is this the character the APC wants to fly its flag at next year’s senatorial election?

Like the proverbial nza bird that eats its fill and then challenges its chi to a wrestling match, Okorocha has stepped back onto his familiar terrain of deceit. He now claims that his name on the ballot guarantees Tinubu’s victory in Imo, while “Hope cannot carry Imo. Cannot carry South East.” The figures tell a different story. In 2015, as a first-term governor seeking re-election and the de facto leader of the APC in Imo, Okorocha delivered Muhammadu Buhari 133,253 votes, about 19 per cent, well short of the 25 per cent he now brags about. Only in 2019, after Uzodimma joined the APC, did Buhari cross the mark, with 140,463 votes, or about 27 per cent. Instructively, most of the votes came from Oru East local government, Uzodimma’s home, where Buhari secured over 90% of the votes cast.

In 2023, when an Igbo son was on the presidential ballot and Ndigbo were emotional about his candidacy, Tinubu polled 66,406 votes in Imo, about 14 per cent and his best result anywhere in the South-East. He got 8,914 votes in Abia, 5,111 in Anambra and 4,772 in Enugu. And where was Okorocha, the self-acclaimed founder of the party? By his own admission on Arise Television, he preferred Peter Obi.

This self-righteous man, who claims to be a victim and prances around Abuja without touching base at home, has labelled Uzodimma greedy. I will not dignify his beer-parlour gossip about what the governor wants. Let us instead examine the facts in the public domain. In December 2014, as a sitting governor, Okorocha contested the APC presidential primary and polled 624 votes. When he lost, he went back home and secured a second term as governor. In 2019, still a sitting governor, he ran for the Senate while sponsoring his son-in-law to succeed him. In 2022, as a senator, he contested the APC presidential primary against Tinubu and scored zero. If that is not greed, what is?

When Uzodimma defeated his son-in-law for the APC governorship ticket, Okorocha moved Nwosu to another party and worked against the APC. Adams Oshiomhole, then national chairman of the APC, called him “an embarrassment to APC” and accused him of trying “to create a dynasty” in Imo. So why is Uzodimma’s senatorial ambition a mortal sin in Okorocha’s eyes? It is the case of the man with a log in his own eye shouting about the speck in another’s.

Okorocha knows he cannot win a councillorship election in his hometown of Ogboko. In September, councillors from Ideato North and Ideato South held a special plenary on the Umuchima Bridge, endorsed Uzodimma for the Imo West Senate seat and barred Okorocha from using roads and bridges he never built. The man who calls himself the Abraham of the APC is today represented in the House of Representatives by an opposition lawmaker, Ikenga Ugochinyere. So much for his electoral value.

These basic facts should guide those goading Okorocha into this political gamble, in which he has sold his soul to betrayal rather than repent of the atrocities of his eight-year imperial reign in Imo State. The APC and its leaders must not allow this perfidy to stand. The party’s fate in Orlu Zone hangs in the balance. Its fate in Imo State also hangs in the balance. Rochas Okorocha is deficient in honour and integrity, carries no electoral value in the state, and has lent himself to the destruction of the APC’s pillar in the South-East.

•Emelumba is Imo state Commissioner for Information, Public Orientation and Strategy