APC Stakeholders Express Worry Over Security in Imo

Okorocha, Ararume, Uzodimma, Izunaso slug it out

Onyebuchi Ezigbo

Stakeholders of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) have raised the alarm over what they described as deteriorating security situation in Imo State.

The party members asked President Muhammadu Buhari and the leadership of the party to urgently declare a state of emergency in the state, even as they accused Governor Rochas Okorocha of making hate speeches fuelling the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) agitations in South-east.

In a protest letter to the National Chairman of the party, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, yesterday in Abuja, the stakeholders also asked the party to immediately get rid of the state governor, Okorocha, if the APC must be repositioned to take over the eastern region in 2019.

Those who signed the letter on behalf of Imo State APC stakeholders included Senators Ben Uwajimogu, Hope Uzodimma, Ifeanyi Araraume, Osita Izunaso, Hon. Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, Hon. Mike Ohia and Hon. Austin Chukwukere.

The group said: “As our party chairman, kindly bring to the notice of our dear president that should the governor in his megalomania... procure further violence in his child like tantrums, a state of emergency in Imo State would be a natural consequence. No other state did the president visit five times to appeal to its people and yet we wobbled. Our party must rid itself of this incorrigible worm, he is indeed a cankerworm.

“This attempt to drag the state into further violence in the face of a non existent state assembly only points to the complete breakdown of an already non-existent governance for which the state of emergency envisaged in the Section 305 of the Constitution is to be declared.”

The party leaders commended the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party “for standing firm to the rules and guidelines of our party and upholding our duly conducted and video recorded congresses across our state, in spite of the unruly and unlawful conduct/misconduct of our state governor, who happens to be one of our party members.”

The letter was copied President Muhammadu Buhari, Chairman and Deputy Chairman (South) of the party, National Assembly, all state governors, the National Security Adviser, the Inspector General of Police, DG, Department of State Services as well as members of the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party for necessary action

It also read: “You may thus be alarmed that with the near bankruptcy of our state, reeling in this wanton misgovernance, is yet the subject of the threat contained in the governor’s letter to you stating that he is aware of the burning of the secretariat of our party. Whilst threatening further mayhem. he also has forwarded to you his videos of those he caught with result sheets (which the party did not report missing). The governor, having arrested those people (who are contractors of Government House, Owerri), and having called the police and the media himself, proceeded to conduct the investigation himself.”