Imo Guber: Hope Uzodinma Dismisses Reports Of Political Patronage With Okorocha

The member representing Imo West Senatorial Zone in Imo State,
Senator Hope Uzodinma has denied having any meeting with Governor
Rochas Okorocha for him (Okorocha) to support him win the senatorial
election and get his (Uzodinma's) endorsement for the gubernatorial
election.

Rumours and reports in some local tabloids in Owerri, the state
capital, had it that arrangements may have been concluded and possibly
sealed by supporters of Governor Okorocha to vote massively for
Senator Uzodinma against the All Progressives Congress. APC, flag
bearer for Orlu Senatorial zone, Senator Osita Izunaso during the
National Assembly elections next month.

This, it was learnt, followed a meeting convened by Senator Uzodinma,
where he was said to have pledged to support the governor extend his
stay at Douglas House beyond 2015.

Part of the agreement, as was gathered, included that all supporters
of Uzodinma would vote for Okorocha as a payback should Okororcha use
his position to garner enough massive support that would see the
senator returning to the red chambers.

But speaking with journalists in Owerri at the residence of his Royal
Highness, Eze Cletus Ilomuanya, Uzodinma, who was in the company of
Chief Chuma Nnaji, deputy governorship candidate of the PDP, said he
had never had any meeting with the governor over any political
patronage and would never solicit for such from him in future.

The senator disclosed that Imo State was on a threshold of making
another history of removing the incumbent governor because "Rochas has
disappointed his generation and the greater number of the people of
the state, who had expected him to act as the messiah he had claimed".

Rather, he said "Rochas turned Imo State as a personal estate, telling
the poor masses to keep enduring the poverty he had brought to the
state while only his family members enjoying the good things of life".

Uzodinma disclosed that Okorocha is the only in Nigeria who the people
earnestly want to remove by all means because he has failed the state
in many areas, depleting the education, health and local government as
well as town union systems in the state.
--247ureports