Tinubu ill-informed on Oshiomhole, says Okorocha after meeting Buhari

Rochas Okorocha, governor of Imo state, says Bola Tinubu, a national leader of the of the All Progressives Congress (APC), is wrong to have said Adams Oshiomhole, national chairman of the ruling party, is running the affairs of the party rightly.

Tinubu had expressed support for Oshiomhole after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari in Aso Rock on Wednesday.

The APC leader had said he was against those mounting pressure on Oshiomhole to step down.

But speaking on Thursday after meeting Buhari on Thursday, Okorocha said Tinubu was wrong to have said that Oshiomhole was doing the right thing.

“Maybe he is ill-informed; if he is properly informed, he will not be saying Oshiomhole is doing the right thing in the party,” Okorocha told state house correspondents.

Okorocha is one of the APC governors said to be dissatisfied with the leadership of the party over the difficulty he is experiencing in his bid to have Uche Nwosu, his son-in-law, succeed him.

Okorocha said some of the decisions taken by Oshiomhole have affected the party negatively.

“I am here to clear the air that the presidency is behind what Oshiomole is doing in some of the states and which has affected our party negatively; and my from my understanding from Mr President, there is no such directive for Oshiomole to do anything illegal or create any sort of injustice,” he said.

“So, Oshiomole is on his own in this whole thing. There is no presidency’s support for him to refused candidate those who won elections and give wrong candidates who didn’t win election. This is the matter and I will simply say that he is not with the consent of the presidency, he is on his own.

“I also requested that Oshiomole must learn to respect the rule of law and obey court orders where they apply. This issue of treating court orders as tissue papers must stop, it doesn’t reflect the image of our party, he must act quickly to fix the integrity of this party because his coming in ought to have brought joy into the party and not sadness.”

Asked if the party was disintegrating, the Governor said, “Well, APC will not disintegrate for as long as the person, Muhammadu Buhari is still the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and remains the leader of this party. So we cannot give that credit to the chairman.”

On if the party would submit the name of Hope Uzodinma, a governorship aspirant in the state, to INEC and its implications, Okorocha said, “He can’t! I don’t think the national working committee will do that because in the first place, the National Working Committee sent a 13-man delegation who conducted election and 12 of them signed proven that Uche Nwosu won the election with 265,000 votes as against Hope Uzodinma who got less than 7,000 votes; so they can’t do that. And there is a letter to that effect from the National Working Committee saying Uche Nwosu won, there is a Certificate of Return given to Uche Nwosu, there is a Police report saying Uche Nwosu, there is INEC report saying Uche Nwosu. So nobody can do that and if they do that, that must be the worst imposition in the history of Nigeria.”

On his part, Oshiomhole has vowed not to do what he considers improper in order to keep his job.

“Let me say that if there is a choice between my conscience – what I believe is right and mortgaging that conscience in order to keep the job, I will have no difficulty resolving it in favour of my conscience,” Oshiomhole had said on Wednesday.

“And those who know me know that at my age, I cannot learn new tricks. I am absolutely committed to justice, fairness, I am a stickler to enforcement of rules; because the source of relevance is derived from rules. I have lived my life fighting for justice and fairness.

“Three governors are not particularly pleased with the outcome of the primaries in their states. These are internal family issues; they are my friends, and that is important, even in moment of distress, that friendship is I want to believe is enough to help us to build a reconciliation.”