OPINION: Okorocha Still Haunted By His Iberiberism Fad

By Oguwike Nwachuku

I recently watched the nauseating outing of former Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State who also represented Imo West in the Senate at a time on Channels and Arise News television stations and came to the sad conclusion that the man needs help.

Yes, Okorocha needs help and urgently too.

Personally, I was not much carried away by his posturing behind the television screen than I was about his physical appearance. I am sure many other discerning and intuitive minds must have seen what I saw.

Pronto, Owelle is sick, not just physically but psychologically, mentally and emotionally, and all these were evident in the manner he communicated on the television stations he appeared on.

I therefore suggest that those who still harbour some modicum of love for Owelle, especially his family, must be quick in offering some help to him before the unimaginable is heard.

If you are at sea why Okorocha was a guest of the stations, come close.

He had gone to “celebrate” a federal high court judgment that said he was the one elected as candidate for his senatorial district at the Senate and not the incumbent Governor Hope Uzodimma despite the fact that Uzodimma was overwhelmingly elected by his constituents during the May 18, 2026 APC National Assembly primary election in Imo State.

No doubt, the unexpected court ruling alone had the potential to disorganise the physical, mental, psychological and emotional stability of Okorocha whom I perceived was not very strong enough to weather the challenges emanating from the kleiglight he was exposed to and may not have experienced for God knows how long now.

From the court premises to Okorocha’s Abuja residence and to the studios of the television stations, anyone could have mistaken all the excitement to mean that the former Imo State Governor had been elected the new President of Nigeria.

Put differently, there must not have been any occasion that should have called for such joyous celebration around Owelle of late.

The icing on the cake was even when the former National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Alhaji Abdullahi Ganduje, apparently on a mockery mission congratulatory mission, sauntered into Okorocha’s living room and the excitement that greeted his arrival from the former Governor’s family members and his permanent hangers on.

Obviously, Okorocha needed to cap up the celebration the entire family was entangled in shortly after Justice Obiora Egwuatu of the federal high court Abuja gave the judgement with the television stations outing. He didn’t need to be invited by the television stations. He simply called the anchor persons and told them to wait for him as he had a story for them.

To Okorocha and his family, it does not really matter if the appellate court will throw away the case (now on appeal) the next day, for lacking in facts and merit given the condemnations already trailing Justice Egwuatu’s ruling, and believed by many as a travesty of justice.

What matters to them most was the short- lived joy and celebration galore Egwuatu’s ruling brought to the Okorocha family and the tone it set for Owelle and his political allies in Abuja, in their quest to fight Uzodimma and Imo State. I shall return to this shortly.

In the build-up to the 2019 general elections and the prevailing madness then in Imo State under Okorocha’s watch and his resolve to, willy-nilly, foist his son in law, Uche Nwosu on the people as his successor, a piece, “Uche Nwosu as the last vestige of Okorocha’s iberiberism,” authored by yours sincerely became inevitable.

Yours sincerely is afraid that Okorocha’s outing at the television stations few days ago has opened a fresh chapter in his iberiberism, a fad many thought had become history.

Writing on Interview Magazine in 2018, the current Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Leadership Newspapers, Mr. Azu Ishiekwene brought to the fore the leadership deficit in Okorocha.

Azu wrote: “Where did Okorocha get his leadership lesson from? Benue? Neighbouring  Anambra, where the government’s sensational claim of exporting $5 million worth of vegetables has caused a stir?

“Or from faraway Turkey, where he took over 100 people, including traditional rulers and his in-laws, on investment tourism?

“After electing the Okorochas of this world, voters wake up the next day feeling defrauded and wishing for what might have been. Whether in Imo, Ekiti or Benue, they’ll have to live with it until the incumbent’s tenure expires, and learn that their vote could alter their destinies.

“For now, it’s a one-chance bus they must endure.”

Okorocha’s recent appearance on the television stations and his posturing are nothing but a sad reminder of what Imo people have had to live with under his supervision.

It spoke volumes about a man whose eight years reign did not just alter but destroyed the destinies of the people who voted him into office and had to bear the brunt of his style of leadership that oozed corruption, greed, selfishness, incompetence, looting and other forms of iberiberism ( his own coinage).

Watching Okorocha saying that Uzodimma did not win the Imo West senatorial primary election in a contest that INEC officials led by Chukwuemeka Ibejiakor, a REC, and members of the APC Primary Election Committee led by Rear Admiral Williams Kayoda (rtd), supervised the processes in all the 137 Electoral Wards and 12 LGAs in the zone, says a lot about the character who determined the fate of Imo people for eight years as their Governor.

It also conveys a message about how envious the man whom Orlu people have practically excommunicated and roundly vowed not to have anything to do with him politically if he could say on the national television that his major preoccupation is to stop Uzodimma from going to the Senate.

Were Okorocha to be healthy, he may not say such and will resist every temptation to be used as a tool by enemies of Imo State and Ndigbo to undermine his kinsman.

Unfortunately, Okorocha allowed the coterie of his Abuja-based godfathers and political allies to take advantage of his not too healthy situation to make him the arrowhead of the gang working to victimize Uzodimma using the unpopular court judgment as a test case.

The gang found in an ailing and weak Okorocha the nuzzle for the dispensation of blackmail, lies, propaganda, slander, forgrey. The way Okorocha is going if his Abuja gang members tell him to assassinate Uzodimma he may buy into it.

I will give only two examples to justify how sickly and desperate Okorocha and his co travellers have become to achieve their plot against Uzodimma.

One is Okorocha’s lie that Uzodimma has not started and completed any project since he came into office in 2020.

If Okorocha dares come to Imo State and opens his mouth to say such nonsense he will instantly curry the wrath of the people and regret ever making such a comment.

They will remind Okorocha that Imo State House of Assembly Complex, Owerri-Orlu road, Owerri-Okigwe road, Owerri-Mbaise-Umuahia road, Owerri-Onitsha road, Owerri- Elele-Port Harcourt road, Oru-Mgbee-Akokwa-Uga-Aguata road, Assumpta Cathedral twin Flyovers, Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu International Convention Centre, Concorde Hotel, Orashi Electricity, Arugo Ultra Modern Bus Terminal, Naze Ultra Modern Bus Terminal, Imo State New EXCO Chambers, Sam Mbakwe International Cargo Airport night landing facilities, Imo State Banquet Hall,  the Imo Digital City complex on Egbu road, the eleven storey Imo Revenue House Towers on Bank road, the Imo State Health Insurance Complex on New Owerri, the Imo Robotic and Oncology Centre (IROC), Umuguma, to name but a few are all Uzodimma’s projects.

They will remind Okorocha that the list of Governor Uzodimma’s facilities in Imo State is inexhaustible.

But how can Rochas Okorocha know about the existence of these projects and facilities when he has been away from Imo State and remained ensconced in Abuja for years midwifing mischief and plotting evil with evil men?

How could he have known such facilities are in place when, as Governor, his major preoccupation was to acquire valuable assets he knew belonged to the government and invariably to the people, and converted them for his use and the use of his family members?

Was that not how he converted the now

Imo State owned K O Mbadiwe University in Ogboko to Eastern Palm University knowing full well that the money he used in setting up the institution belonged to the State as government records revealed?

Today, Imo State is a proud owner of a sprawling Artisan Hub on Owerri-Aba road where all manner of craft are learned. Until recently, the government facility was intentionally appropriated by Okorocha and ceded to his wife for for the now ill-fated All-in-Mall. The things Okorocha used his office to forcefully take from Imo State in a brazen abuse of office are numerous to mention.

When I said it was a sick Okorocha I saw on television stations, it could not have been a made up story because only a sick person will come on national television stations to deny the numerous verifiable projects Uzodimma has ingrained in Imo State which even the blind can feel.

Now, let me use the findings of factcheckafrica to answer Okorocha on his insinuation that Uzodimma has never won an election before.

“Senator Rochas Okorocha’s claim that Governor Hope Uzodinma has never won an election in his life is misleading.

While the political trajectory and legal maneuvers of the 2019 governorship race, as well as recent primary outcomes remain subjects of intense public discussion and judicial dispute, historical records confirm that Uzodinma previously won popular legislative elections to the Nigerian Senate and assumed executive office following a legally binding Supreme Court declaration,”

factcheckafrica wrote.

I promised to give only two examples to prove him wrong and they have underscored my insistence that Owelle is sick and needs help.

Dr. Ethelbert Okere’s piece, “As Okorocha returns to limelight,” had on its own, answered most of the questions that agitated my mind on this Okorocha’s show of shame and I don’t intend to waste our time any longer on them.

However, Okere’s intervention has further helped to underscore the fears that though Okorocha thought he could use the court judgment to record a triumphal entry into the national political arena he has been absent for years, he ended up using the same opportunity to dance naked at the market square, an indication that the many years of self isolation he was associated with were years he was using to treat a certain ailment that was still not cured before he showed up on the television stations.

Truth is that there was primary election between Governor Uzodimma and Senator Okorocha in the 12 LGAs and 237 Wards in Orlu and at the end of the contest, Governor Uzodimma trounced Okorocha, scoring overwhelming vote of 230,464 against Okorocha’s 1098 votes.

INEC officials were present. And APC NASS Primary Election Committee members led by Chairman of the Committee and Returning Officer, Rear Admiral Williams Kayoda (rtd) were also present.

Together they oversaw the entire processes from start to finish in all the LGAs to the admiration of Party members.

Okorocha is therefore simply chasing shadow and intentionally working against the interest of the APC he claims to be a founding member and by extension, against the reelection of President Bola Tinubu.

This particular attitude should be of concern to President Bola Tinubu and the leadership of the APC.

It is high time the President and the APC leadership ask what manner of founding member Okorocha actually is. What manner of founding father will be teaching his children and supporters how to lie as a way of retaining his ego? Or what manner of founding member should be working with those opposed to the tenets and principles of the Party he claimed to have founded to destroy it?

By the APC rules, the Governors are the leaders of the Party in their States while the President is the leader in the country. I’m not aware that rule has changed. What manner of founding father therefore does not know that the rules have not altered?

Incidentally, Okorocha’s rabid greed and faded popularity ego will not allow him submit himself to the authority of either the State headed by Uzodimma or that of the Party at the national level.

Governor Uzodimma, by the APC rules, controls the Party structure in Imo State on trust for the members but Okorocha is one character who is used to personalising Party structure that ought to be communally owned, something he was used to as was evident in the manner he ran a family system of government ( familocracy) for eight years in Imo State.

Today, it is not in doubt that it was his abysmal performance in Imo State that

took away what was left of any political relevance in him from the State and by extension, from the country.

No responsible leader anywhere in the world will appear on national television the way Okorocha did to celebrate a judgement he knows will bring temporary joy and be thrown out at the appellate court for lacking in facts and for being against the rules of his Party.

His resort to emotional blackmail of the watching public to be helped to remain relevant after squandering golden opportunity to live in the hearts of the people with good works is not a project that can be executed by happenstance.

Be that as it may, let no one be deceived by Okorocha’s usual excitable character, his iberiberism fad, whether you are from his senatorial district, from Imo State or from anywhere in Nigeria.

If anything, the public should think deeply about the popular advertising pay-off, caveat emptor – buyer beware.

Nwachuku is the Chief Press Secretary/Special Adviser Media  to Governor Uzodimma