Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha
Leke Baiyewu and Ramon Oladimeji
The Governor of Imo State, Rochas Okorocha, has said Ike Ekweremadu should be warming up to lose his seat as the Deputy Senate President.
Okorocha said a candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Benjamin Uwajumogu, who contested in last Saturday rerun senatorial election in Imo State, would displace Ekweremadu as soon as he joins the Senate.
He said it would be an aberration for Ekweremadu, of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, to still continue to retain his seat as the Deputy Senate President, after Uwajumogu had joined the Senate.
Okorocha’s Chief Press Secretary, Sam Onwuemeodo, quoted the Imo State governor as saying this on Sunday night at a victory party he organised to celebrate the outcome of the July 23, 2016 rerun election for Okigwe zone senatorial seat and the two state constituencies of Oru-East and Oru-West in Imo State.He said Ekweremadu himself had known and feared the possibility of losing his seat, saying that was why he relocated to Imo State three days to the rerun election.Okorocha said that with the outcome of the rerun election, Ekweremadu’s seat as the Deputy Senate President had come under “heavy threat.”
Okorocha, however, said it had become inevitable for Ekweremadu not to relinquish the Deputy Senate President seat to Uwajumogu.
He said, “The position of Senator Ike Ekweremadu as the Deputy Senate President is at the moment under heavy threat, because in no distant time, the APC Senator in-waiting from Imo State, Benjamin Uwajumogu, will take over the seat on the grounds that it is an aberration that a PDP senator from the South-East is deputy to an APC Senate President because, before now, the APC could not produce a senator from the South-East zone.
“Senator Ekweremadu had known that such a development was not only feasible but inevitable and that was why he fully funded the candidate of the PDP in the rerun senatorial poll in Okigwe zone and also relocated to the state three days to the election date.”
Okorocha described the victory of the APC in the rerun poll for Okigwe senatorial zone as a victory for the whole of South-East APC in particular and the people of the geo-political zone in general.
Responding, Ekweremadu said Okorocha was on a wild goose chase for saying he (Ekweremadu) would lose his seat to the APC.
Okorocha had claimed that Ekweremadu relocated to Imo State during the inconclusive Imo-North Senatorial District rerun in a bid to influence the outcome of the poll in favour of the Peoples Democratic Party.
In a statement issued by the Special Adviser (Media) to the Deputy President of the Senate, Uche Anichuwku, Ekweremadu said Okorocha’s statement showed a poor understanding of the workings of the legislature.
He said he was not perturbed in any way by the wishful prospects of an APC senator of South-East extraction.
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