The spokesman to former President Goodluck Jonathan, Ikechukwu Eze,\u00a0has debunked the reported claim by Imo state Governor Rochas Okorocha\u00a0that the ex-President offered him huge sums of money and other\u00a0inducements ahead of the 2015 presidential elections.
\nIn a statement issued Wednesday Eze dismissed the claims as lies,\u00a0stressing Dr. Jonathan did not need Okorocha to garner votes in the\u00a0South East, which he described as the former President\u2019s political\u00a0stronghold.
\nEze who insisted Jonathan never had any conversations with Okorocha\u00a0ahead of the 2015 elections, also affirmed that the former President\u00a0was not in the habit of making frivolous promises.
\nHe said: \u201cWe offer to quickly dismiss these claims as lies, because we\u00a0are clear in our minds that such conversation never happened.\u201d
\nThe statement reads: \u201cOur attention has been drawn to a statement\u00a0credited to Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha, and published in the\u00a0New Telegraph newspaper of Wednesday 27 September 2017, where he was\u00a0quoted to have said that former President Dr. Goodluck Jonathan\u00a0offered him an influential ministry and huge sums of money to dump his\u00a0party ahead of the 2015 elections, which he rejected. We offer to\u00a0quickly dismiss these claims as lies, because we are clear in our\u00a0minds that such conversation never happened.
\n\u201cWe are wondering whether this truly came from the governor because we\u00a0are sure that even Governor Okorocha himself did not believe that\u00a0anybody would accept these claims. In the first place it sounded\u00a0irrational and absurd. Besides, it was obvious to all and sundry that,\u00a0the South East, being Dr. Jonathan\u2019s political stronghold, the\u00a0ex-President did not need Okorocha to win in the zone.
\n\u201cHowever, to set the records straight, we make bold to say that former\u00a0President Jonathan never made any contact with Okorocha, ahead of the\u00a02015 elections. The claim of an offer of \u201can influential ministry\u201d is\u00a0also quite surprising because the former President was not in the\u00a0habit of making frivolous promises, especially pertaining to\u00a0Government positions and offices. All those who had either worked\u00a0closely with him in any capacity, or served in Dr. Jonathan\u2019s\u00a0administration can bear testimony to the fact that idle talk is not\u00a0his style.
\n\u201cSince we know that the only proof the purveyors of this bribery\u00a0allegation could offer is to probably claim that the transaction\u00a0happened in a dream, we can only offer the Governor sincere advice, to\u00a0avoid rumours and twaddle, and get down to the business of\u00a0result-oriented governance. Governor Okorocha would have served his\u00a0state better, if he directed his enormous drive to creating growth and\u00a0development opportunities for the good people of Imo State, rather\u00a0than allowing himself to be drawn into dissipating his energy on\u00a0platitudes and propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The spokesman to former President Goodluck Jonathan, Ikechukwu Eze,\u00a0has debunked the reported claim by Imo state Governor Rochas Okorocha\u00a0that the ex-President offered him huge sums of money and other\u00a0inducements ahead of the 2015 presidential elections. In a statement issued Wednesday Eze dismissed the claims as lies,\u00a0stressing Dr. Jonathan did not need Okorocha to garner votes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}