AN effort by governors of the South-East zone to settle the festering rift between Abia State’s Theodore Orji and his Imo counterpart, Rochas Okorocha, suffered a set-back yesterday as Okorocha shunned a planned meeting to discuss the development.For over three hours, from 1.00 p.m., the governors who included Orji, Sullivan Chime (Enugu), Peter Obi (Anambra) and Martin Elechi (Ebonyi), waited at Government House, Enugu, without Okorocha.
Much later when his Deputy, Martin Agbaso, arrived and joined the governors in the meeting, he merely was said to have announced the inability of his principal to make it.Agbaso however left almost immediately and the four governors had to discuss other matters affecting the region.The Guardian gathered that the disagreement between them might not be unconnected with the public ridicule Orji faced recently in Aba during a service in honour of the late Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu where he was said to have been booed by the gathering and Okorocha applauded.
Orji had accused the opposition led by defeated APGA candidate in the 2011 election, Regan Ufomba and others as being responsible.
However, after about four hours of meeting, which ended at about 5.10 p.m., the chairman of the forum of South-East governors, Obi, told anxious reporters that we only discussed security issues as it affects the zone and security issues are not meant to be discussed publicly.
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