Imo State governor, Rochas Okorocha, said on Wednesday he has done nothing to pitch the Catholic Church against the All Progressives Congress (APC) as alleged by the Director General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON), Mr. Osita Okechukwu.
The governor insisted that he has instead shown amazing love and unbridled respect for the Archbishop of Owerri Catholic Diocese, Most Rev. Anthony Obinna and โhas no problem of any kind with the Catholic Church.โ
He also made a donation of N100 million for the completion of the Okigwe Catholic Diocese Cathedral.
Okechukwu had accused Okorocha of pitting the Catholic Church against the APC apparently over the governorโs statement that the Archibishop of Owerri cannot install a governor of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) extraction in 2019.
The Chief Press Secretary to the governor, Mr. Sam Onwuemeodo, said in a statement made available to journalists that โthe Director General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON), Mr. Osita Okechukwu, had accused Governor Rochas Okorocha of pitting the Catholic Church against APC without explaining how he arrived at such claim.
โMr. Okechukwu is one of those who have the erroneous feeling that the only way they can grow in APC is by attacking or pulling down Governor Rochas Okorocha and he has been doing it religiously without any response from us.
โGovernor Okorocha has shown amazing love and unbridled respect to Archbishop Obinna and has no problem of any kind with the Catholic Church. And what Governor Okorocha has done for the Catholic Diocese of Owerri, no past governor whether civilian or military had done it for them. Let anybody say it is not true. And if Mr. Okechukwu had participated or followed events in the 2015 election he would have understood better.
โDonโt forget that President Muhammadu Buhari got only 14,157 votes in Enugu State where the DG comes from, and got 133,253 in Imo not minding that Imo was the target of the PDP-led Federal Governmentโs onslaught in the 2015 election with thousands of soldiers and other security agencies besieging the state.
โIf the governor didnโt mean well, he would not have taken President Buhari to the Archbishop. But two days after that visit, the Leader Newspaper owned by the Archbishop had a banner headline, Alhaji in Government House. The name Okoro-Hausa also came from the same source.
โAnd if the campaign of the PDP and a section of the Church that Buhari and Rochas would Islamize the South-East if APC wins didnโt get to Enugu State it means the presence of the party in the state was never considered a threat. But in Imo, that was the major campaign. Mr. Okechukwu wonโt understand because he was contended with his much talked about relationship with the President.โ
