BY CHUDI EMENALOM
Governor Rochas Okorocha’s intention to hold Mock Primary in the All Progressive Congress, APC in Imo State is one of the biggest jokes of the century.
According to him, the exercise is aimed at electing or selecting candidates for various elective positions in the party.This sounds absurd and certainly against the grain of commonsense. In his usual and strange belief in things that are unconventional, Okorocha wants to desperately introduce alien practices in a party which he does not own solely. He is only giving credence to insinuations that he is paying lip service to the affairs of the party in the State and may be in cahoots with strange political forces outside the party to oil his much vaunted presidential ambition.
This is not farther from the truth considering his disposition to the party in Imo State before now. It is an open fact that under his watch, the APC in Imo State had remained in doldrums, in the wilderness as party members were denied political patronage. Party officers at a time were starved of funds as rents of party offices in some local Governments were seldom paid. It took the intervention of Senator Ifeanyi Araraume and other concerned party leaders to save the situation and the agony party members were undergoing.
Therefore his desire to hold a mock primary is simply an extension of “killing” the party in Imo State whose image and electoral value he has diminished due to his actions which had earned opprobrium for the party in recent times.
There is nothing wrong with the APC as a political party in Imo State. The party came on a mission to change the lot of Imo people for good but sadly due to Okorocha’s actions and misconception about governance, Imo people are not better off. It is important to state that at no time did the APC as a political party in Imo State expected such a turn around in the lives of the people but now it can decipher why it is so.
It was Okorocha’s anti peoples policy that diminished the acceptance and perception rating of the party in Imo State. Therefore, a mock primary for the APC in Imo State as Okorocha suggested is a like a hot knife on a butter he wants to place on the party in Imo State. The negative consequences of such exercise on the party in Imo State will be calamitous because it is a clear recipe for chaos and an exercise that will further polarize the party with serious electoral consequences at the elections in Imo State.
It can be easily be deduced from Okorocha’s body language that because of his inordinate ambition to install Uche Nwosu as his successor, the mock primary he is single-handedly proffering in the APC is driven by a desperation to achieve his purpose. He is also held hostage by the fear factor, fear of the unknown considering the fact he is up against some forces in Imo APC that are yearning for genuine rescue of the party from his grip.
The question is why is Okorocha who is Chairman of the APC Governor Forum afraid of holding the constitutionally approved party primaries as enshrined in the APC Constitution in Imo APC. Arrogating himself powers to change what is constitutionally approved by the APC is clear manifestation of his resort to any means in his veiled desperation to achieve his selfish purpose of installing an unpopular successor.