*Former Deputy Speaker, Federal House of Representatives and former Imo State Governor, Hon. Emeka Ihedioha
Hon. Okey Onyekanma, the immediate past Deputy Speaker of the Imo State House of Assembly has described the news that he led the former governor of the state, Hon. Emeka Ihedioha, to the State Assembly to plead for pardon over the ongoing probe into the alleged missing N19.68b local government funds as fake news.
He said, “(My) attention has been drawn to a doctored picture attached to a story circulating online, insinuating that the immediate past Governor of Imo State, His Excellency, Rt. Hon Emeka Ihedioha, sneaked into the State House of Assembly complex recently, with the aid of the former Deputy Speaker, Rt. Hon Okey Onyekanma, member representing Mbaitoli State Constituency, to plead with lawmakers for ‘soft landing’ in the ongoing probe of N19.68b Local Government Area (LGA) funds.
“The peddlers of the fake, unsubstantiated and damaging news, edited an old picture to give undeserving credence to their misinformation. We wish to state, without any fear of contradiction that the picture was taken in July 2019, when Rt. Hon Emeka Ihedioha, as then governor visited the Imo State House of Assembly. It is unfortunate to note that some people who are on wild goose chase doctored the picture and imputed the picture of the Governor of the state, His Excellency, Distinguished Senator Hope Uzodinma, asserting that Hon. Emeka Ihedioha and Hon. Okey Onyekanma visited the speaker of Imo State House of Assembly (IMHA), recently. The news is fake, and I urge the general public to treat it as such.”
However, political watchers in Imo State have chided the desperation with which the Sen. Hope Uzodimma’s administration have been doing everything within its powers to tarnish the good image of former Governor Emeka Ihadioha. Rather than pay more attention to the daunting challenge of fixing Imo State, which the former Governor Rochas Okorocha plundered, Uzodimma have been chasing Ihadioha. It is difficult who within the few months he stayed in power before he was upstaged by the Supreme Court showed Imo people what good governorship is again.
Unlike Rochas who owed months of salaries and could not pay pensioners, Emeka Ihedioha started paying workers their full pay at the end of the month (recall that Rochas was not paying civil servants their full salaries). He also started paying pensioners as at when due and flagged off so many road projects, which Rochas abandoned for eight years. People are convinced that members of Imo State House of Assembly are a bunch of charlatans because if indeed they want to carry out thorough investigation of misgovernment in Imo State, they cannot skip Rochas Okorocha’s destructive leadership to begin the probe of Ihedioha’s few months in office.
