National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) John Odigie-Oyegun, Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai, and his Bauchi State counterpart, Mohammed Abubakar, have described the Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha, as a visionary politician who saved Ndigbo from “meaningless” opposition.
The trio who were in Owerri, the Imo State capital, to witness a public presentation on Okorocha’s scorecard in five years.
They noted that Okorocha took an uncommon and unusual decision when he joined the APC at a time Igbos were supporting the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Lauding Okorocha’s achievements, El Rufai said: “I respect Governor Okorocha because he is one of the few politicians who saw tomorrow. The entire Southeast should commend him because if not for him they would have been condemned to meaningless opposition.
“Imo is already great; as a first time governor, I am happy to associate with experienced governors like Okorocha to get free training, I commend Okorocha for his views, achievements and above all, for his ‘Nigerianess’ because he has proved that Nigeria is truly one.”
Abubakar described Okorocha as one of the most performing APC governors. “I am yet to see such achievements or performance put together by any governor in Nigeria. I must congratulate the Okorocha and his team for the great achievements despite the paucity of funds.”
Odigie-Oyegun noted that Okorocha has made the party proud by surpassing his campaign promises. “I want to say that Imo State today is better and has been rescued, and as the National Chairman of the APC, I am happy with the level of achievements recorded by the Rescue Mission Administration.”
Okorocha said his administration was able to achieve all it did because it adopted an unusual approach that undermined bureaucratic bottlenecks that has hitherto marred government business.
According to him, “when we came in we adopted what we called four-year rolling plan signed by the House of Assembly, which is like a four year budget and allows you know what you are going to do for the next four years and this removed all the bureaucratic bottlenecks which is the greatest enemy of government business. For the five years I have been in power, I have not been in my office for more than 15 times because many Governors spend a great deal of time talking about Due Process, which I call Due Process of corruption, so we have removed Due Process in government business in Imo State and that is why we have achieved so much with very little capital”.