Imo State governor, Emeka Ihedioha has described the immediate past governor, Owelle Rochas Okorocha as a man without character and a hater of Ndigbo.
He said this while lamenting Okorocha’s decision to discontinue the Ahiajoku Festival and Lecture series.
According to Ihedioha, Okorocha never valued the culture of Ndigbo.
Ihedioha stated this during the 40th anniversary of the Ahiajoku Lecture held yesterday at the Ahiajoku Convention Centre, Owerri.
The Governor also lamented that he inherited from Okorocha a state that is in ruins and one that has suffered monumental neglect in the last eight years.
He said, “Today, Imo State is on the march again. Never again a man without character will rule Imo State.”
He noted that ever since the institution of the Ahiajoku lecture series by the late first civilian governor of old Imo State, Chief Sam Onunaka Mbakwe, the lecture series has remained an intellectual and cultural harvest of Igbo people.
He added, “It is important in this short narrative to note that during what is clearly now properly categorized as the locust years (2011 – 2018) when a man who rode on the popularity of an essentially Igbo party to beguile Imo people, but who turned out to despise everything the Igbo hold dear, a man who limped into Douglas House Owerri on a lie of the garb, never held the lecture; instead, the name of Ahiajoku Centre was changed to Imo State Investment Centre and anything that could amount to an intellectual journey of discovery for the Igbo was shunned by this man for eight years.
“Even all the cultural artifacts at the Mbari centre were equally destroyed and termed as idols.”
