NewsImo Gladiators Fight To Finish

Imo Gladiators Fight To Finish

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BEVERLY HILLS, March 01, (THEWILL) – In a video circulating on Social Media, former Imo state governor, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, dressed in deep blue agbada while his successor, Hope Uzodinman, fitted in his traditional red cap and short sleeves, banter like two college mates, laughing and slapping hands amid politicians until former All Progressives Congress, APC, National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, dressed in his trade mark ‘khakhi’ outfit, walked into the picture and spoiled the fun for the viewer.

It is old but in view of their current fight, the post portrays deception and looks like a replay of an attempt at a well-intended but futile effort by southeast governors and party stakeholders to settle the rift between the two current gladiators of Imo politics, Okorocha and Uzodinma.

But their fight runs deep, says Martins Ori, Managing Editor of an Owerri based newspaper, New Echo.

Ori, who described himself as a participant-observer of the politics of the state told THEWILL that politics, power and ego is driving the combatants. According to him, the “rift is very deep. This is fight to finish. The thing is that both of them are fighting in their own way. Okorocha claims he brought APC to Imo state and stabilized it and why he was doing it his enemies like Uzodinma labeled him “Okorohausa,” a derisive term to portray him as a sell out. Now, all of them are claiming to be APC members but in reality, the former governor has more grassroots supporters while the incumbent controls the elite. And you know in Nigeria, the grassroots may vote but the elite determine the outcome. The way, I see it, both of them are fighting in their own, separate ways. It is not good for APC here at all.”

The fact that it is not good for APC showed during last midweek visit by Governor Uzodinma to President Buhari in Abuja to brief the leader of the party on disturbances in his state. Speaking with State House Correspondent after his meeting with Buhari, the governor did not mention for once his fight with Okorocha as part of his brief with the President. Just as there has been no real presidential intervention, so too has nothing been heard from the zonal chairman of the party in the face of Governor Mai Buni led-Committee.

What looked like presidential intervention was Okorocha’s claim while addressing his supporters at his Spibat mansion in Owerri on Monday, that the Presidency intervened in the matter.

Okorocha said: “They kept me there (police headquarters) and about 11:30pm, they asked me to go. I want to thank the Presidency for intervening in the matter.

But the state Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Declan Emelumba on Monday cast doubt on Okorocha’s claim.

Emelumba said: “Okorocha was released on Sunday by the police on medical grounds. The man was purging and stooling consistently, the police had to release him on medical grounds to enable him to take care of his health. His release doesn’t mean he will not answer his case.”

In the current phase of their blistering face-off, that social media encounter reads like the opening chapter of their longstanding quarrel and perhaps a pointer to the fact that their fight will not abate soon. While Okorocha simply put up a wry smile, Uzodinma, backing the camera, looked as if ready to pounce. Only Oshiomhole, while trying to mediate kept making overtures to both of them to the amusement of others in the video.

At that moment when Oshiomhole still held sway as party chairman, the primaries of the party was upcoming in Imo state and Okorocha was bent on imposing his son-in-law, Uche Nwosu as governorship candidate of the APC in the 2019 elections. Uzodinma and many party chieftains including Senator Ifeanyi Ararume, kicked against it. When he could not get his way, Okorocha asked his son-in-law to move to Action Alliance, AA as its candidate, while the APC adopted Uzodinma as its candidate.

But the departure of Nwosu and crowing of Uzodinma worsened their rivalry. For one, Okorocha had also felt he had proprietary right to APC in Imo and by extension the Southeast. He took his faction of his former party, on whose platform he won his first term as governor, the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA into the merger parties that formed APC. While he was at it, Uzodinma, who was a Senator on the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, platform accused him of a sell out of his zone to the North. Uzodinma’s emergence as party candidate, after his defection to the APC, reportedly infuriated Okorocha to no end.

Since then, former governor Okorocha, who currently represents Imo West Senatorial Constituency since the 2019 election has drawn the battle line with Uzodinma, embittered by the over night emergence of the governor, courtesy of a Supreme Court ruling that annulled the governorship of PDP’s Emeka Ihedioha in January 2020. Since then, what Okorocha felt when he was insulted with the appellation “OkoroHausa”, can only be imagined by the governor, who is often traduced by his enemies by calling him ‘Supreme Court Governor.” Okorocha threw that jab in his reaction to his arrest by the police on Sunday, saying, “…Uzodinma who became governor through the courts must learn to obey court order..”

While it was easy for people to read political rivalry in Ihedioha’s attack against Okorocha’s seeming personalization of the state and its properties during his governorship, Uzodinma’s similar attack would therefore be viewed differently because they belong, ordinarily, to the same APC.

That is why in a Wednesday, February 24 statement Okorocha said that the governor was attacking him out of “personal hatred and vendetta” and he “cannot win me.”

Is it really? To particularly situate the brawl between them, hear what Justice Flourence Duruoha, head of the Judicial Commission of Enquiry On Lands set up by Ihedioha to investigate cases of corruption and graft in government during and Other Related Matters in 2019, said after receiving 1532 petitions and memoranda: ‘’The visual evidence shows that the distortion of the Owerri Master Plan is colossal and mind boggling. It requires a man and government with a lion’s heart to restore same.”

And the fight may continue

The last week Sunday clash of government officials, security agents with aides of Okorocha at the Royal Palm Hotel, owned by his wife and Tuesday, February 23 follow-up of the pulling down of the fence of the building housing Reach FM Radio, owned by his daughter, Uloma Nwosu, reportedly by government officials is just another display of raw power and control in the supremacy battle between the duo, leaving the courts or law out of the equation.

Meanwhile, the court case involving his personal aides will keep the fight in public view. The aides, Darlington Ibekwe and 13 other loyalists of Senator Okorocha, were accused of conspiring among themselves to disobey a lawful order issued by the state by removing the seal of the state government and entering into the sealed premises of Royal Spring Palm Hotel and Apartments belonging to Okorocha.

And on Thursday, Justice Fred Njemanze of the Imo State High Court, Owerri, ordered an interim forfeiture of all the properties illegally acquired by a former governor of the state, Rochas Okorocha, who was in office from 2011 to 2019.

The order was sequel to an application brought by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Louis Alozie

About the Author

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Amos Esele is the Deputy Editor of THEWILL Newspaper. He has over two decades of experience on the job.

Amos Esele, THEWILLhttps://thewillnews.com
Amos Esele is the Deputy Editor of THEWILL Newspaper. He has over two decades of experience on the job.

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