The Imo state governor, Rochas Okorocha on Thursday blamed Igbo leaders of what he called “unholy acts” which has now denied the region the chance to produce either a Senate president or the Speaker of the House of Representatives in June.
The All Progressives Congress lost all senatorial and House of Representatives elections held in the region.
All 15 senatorial districts in the five states, Anambra, Abia, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo were picked by the candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party.
However, with the victory by Muhummadu Buhari from the North and his South West deputy, Yemi Osinbajo, the Senate president position would have normally gone to the South East but for the outcome of the elections.
After Thursday’s Owerri rally organised by the South East APC to celebrate Buhari’s victory, the Imo state governor, Rochas Okorocha, said that the region should have elected a ranking senator or member of the House of the Representatives on the platform of the party to occupy either of the positions if PDP leaders from the zone had not engineered the rigging of the National Assembly election held the same day with that of the presidency.
He said that the former governor, Chris Ngige, or the former senator, Osita Izunaso, both of whom contested the election, would have been elected Senate president if they were not rigged out at the election.
He said, “The South East is entitled to either the Senate President or the Speaker of the Federal House. But as I speak to you now because of the unholy act of last Saturday they (Igbo leaders) have not been able to give us any ranking member of the Senate or ranking member of the Federal House.
“You cannot be a Senate President, you cannot be a Speaker unless you are somebody who has been there before. It is our plan that Osita Izunaso should go to the Senate, Ngige should go to Senate.
“Gentlemen, the truth is that one of them should have been Senate President of Nigeria. But our people, in their myopic thinking, in the smallness of their brain could not see the light and today this act of theirs has denied Ndigbo the Senate President, this act has denied Ndigbo the Speaker of the Federal House. I weep, I weep that this kind of thing can be allowed to happen here.”
Okorocha said that politics in the North is quite different from the kind of politics being exhibited by South East leaders.
“This kind of thing could not happen in Kano, it could not happen in Sokoto,” he said.
“But here in Igbo land they use soldiers to kill their people. It is our political leaders who sponsored this unholy act and we shall hold them responsible for every blood dropped during this election.
“We know them and they know we know them. They can be having their children abroad and be killing the poor people here. We will resist it and we will say no. “
The governor accused Igbo leaders of manipulating results and trying to give 1.3 million votes to Jonathan in Imo state “but for our resistance they could not do it”.
He stressed, “It is not true that anyone defeated Buhari in Imo State. He won this election in this state. The nonsense is over. We have the details of all that happened in INEC headquarters. It will be embarrassing if we show all that happened to the world.”
Ngige explained how he was rigged out of the polls in which he lost to a serving member of the House of Representatives, Uche Ekwunife of the PDP.
He said that one of his agents was kidnapped and the collation order was also kidnapped.
According to the former governor, “The only thing I want to assure you people is that you have lost nothing. General Buhari has won the election. APC will form the next national government. We are going to recover all these seats, all the allocation they gave to us. All the allocations they gave to us, they allocated to me 20 votes from Anambra Central and Buhari 17, 960 votes, for the whole of Anambra. Is it possible?”
The APC had lost all the senatorial positions in the South East and accused the PDP of rigging the elections in the region.
