Okorocha to Nigerians: Fayose is talking nonsense, ignore him

*Says Nnamdi Kanu is seeking relevance, wants FG to develop S/East

Imo State Governor and Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Governors Forum, Rochas Okorocha has called on Nigerians to disregard the allegations made by the Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose that President Muhammadu Buhari has been on life support in a London hospital.

Fayose had claimed that Buhari has been on life support since June 6 at a hospital in West End, London and called on the president to resign.

But Okorocha while speaking to State House correspondents on Thursday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, said Fayose does not have the qualifications to speak for the nation whether the President should resign or stay.

He said, “I do not know if he (Fayose) is speaking from the point of view of being the chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum or he is speaking as a person or as a governor. I do not understand but whatever it is, people must disregard him.

“It is not in our culture, it is not on our tradition. We sympathize with those who go through pains of ill-health, at that time we don’t wish them death, we wish them well.”

He noted that President’s office was being properly taken care of by the Acting President Yemi Osinbajo until Buhari comes back home and continues his work and finish his term.

Okorocha then said, “But for Governor Fayose to say that President Buhari should resign is a cheap talk and does not make sense in anyway. Like I said before, there is absolutely no vacuum. You have an acting president who assumes all the powers of Mr. President. So

I do not know if there are reasons for why the Acting President has not acted on the swearing-in of ministers. But he has the full powers of the president.

“The Acting President can take any decision today and it will be binding on the nation because he is the acting President, he is not the Vice President anymore.

“He sits in place of Mr President and performs all the constitutional duties of Mr President; but if he is taking his times for obvious reasons that is understandably. As acting president, you want to make sure things are in their rightful places before you take any decision but there is no vacuum.

“There is no approval by acting President that was rejected by anybody. He summons meetings, calls for meetings, gives directives he has enough powers for him to executive governmental functions.”

Okorocha also stated that it has become Fasoye’s style of talk and Nigerians must never take that kind of talk serious because it’s capable of creating confusion in the system.

He said, “ The country is stable. The Acting President is doing a beautiful job, is meeting up the daily duties of Mr. President and there is no vacuum. So, there is no cause for alarm.”

Reacting to the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu’s call for the Independent state of Biafra, Okorocha said that the issue of Nnamdi Kanu should be treated as a young man agitating and seeking for relevance, adding that “ these are two different issues.”

According to Okorocha, he ( Nnamdi Kanu) can ride on the back of supposed Igbo marginalization which has been said is not right, and ride on that sentiments and push his agenda but that does not mean that the entire Igbos are speaking with him.

He said, “You must understand the position of a thing and what has created this hullabaloo if you like and the big noise about this whole thing. Nnamdi Kanu was a breakout from MOSSOP and he broke out of parent MOSSOP out of agitation, so it’s all about agitation.

“Last time, I said it depends on how we define this whole thing that is taken out of context. Nnamdi Kanu, a young man seeking relevance, agitating for whatever he believes in, what he stands for must be treated separately from the entire Igbo nation.

“The question is does Nnamdi Kanu has the capacity to lead Igbos to war? Or lead me and the governors to war? So, I will stand now and Nnamdi Kanu will tell me stand up let’s go to war? So, sometimes we over dramatize issue just to make a big deal out of it and that has been the big challenge.

“Like the gentleman that spoke for the Arewa youths, and these are not more than 17 young men speaking for millions of Arewa youths and it doesn’t make sense because if you ask any Arewa youth now if he is part of this, he will tell you no. We don’t have that wisdom of narrowing things to the perspective where they belong but we like to enlarge it to create the confusion that we all enjoy and the confusion of not well-taken care of will consume Nigeria one day. And that is what some of us are trying to avoid.”

Governor Okorocha further said that it was the duty of the elders and leaders to the younger ones to call them to order and assure Nigerians that they should not see the “call for Biafra’s independence as a break-up but agitation because the youths perceived that the South East has been neglected overtime politically, economically, socially and all that.”

He further said, “Their roads are impassable; you cannot pass Port Harcourt Road , Enugu Road, Aba Road, Bayelsa Road and all the roads. You can hardly see federal government presence in the South East, all the things you see are self-made things.

” Even the Onitsha Bridge has been a theoretical talk, fabrications which does not represent realities. So, this is a mix up. So he speaks his own and joined it to our issues and it now looks like a nationwide thing. That is not the issue.

“We have called for unity and have agreed that we will remain united. Very soon, some of us have taken it upon ourselves to reach out to this young men talk to them. We must understand that our young men are frustrated; if they are as comfortable as we are, they will not be able to say those things they are saying.”