A police officer was killed in a gunman attack on Rochas Okorocha’s convoy, the former governor of Imo State, on Friday.
On the Okigwe-Enugu expressway, the former governor’s convoy was ambushed at the Ihube community.
Terrorists had besieged the Ihube axis of the expressway and had been killing and abducting people for ransom.
A number of local officials’ homes have already been searched. These have forced a large number of natives to flee their homes in search of safety in the state capital of Owerri and other locations.
Okorocha acknowledged the assassination attempt and the murder of the police officer and expressed regret that his convoy might be targeted.
Okorocha, who headed the state from 2011 to 2019, claimed that the officer slain was one of the officers sent from the government building to accompany him to the funeral service for the mother of Emeka Ihedioha, the recently-departed governor of Imo state.
At Samuel Anyanwu’s birthday anniversary celebration on Sunday in Amaimo, in the state’s Ikeduru Local Government Area, Okorocha, the Peoples Democratic Party candidate for governor on November 11 in Imo state, said that the shooting of the cop was “unfortunate.”
The former governor claimed that when his convoy was attacked, he was returning from Enugu where he had attended the funeral service for the wife of a former senate president, Ken Nnamani.
In order to transport himself and his team to Imo state for the funeral ceremony of Ihedioha’s mother, Okorocha said that Peter Mbah, the governor of Enugu state, had released vehicles and security personnel.
He revealed that the attack happened after he had done attending the funeral service in Mbaise, the convey had dropped him off at his Spilbat house in Owerri, and they were on their way back to Enugu.
He added that he was angry because although he felt secure in Enugu, an attack occurred and a security guard was slain in his own state.
He said, “I am angry. I am very angry. I am angry because I spent two days in Enugu and nothing happened to me but it is in my own state that the convoy released to me by the governor of Enugu state (a very good man) to attend the burial ceremony of Ihedioha’s mother at Mbaise that was attacked and one policeman killed.
“What is happening in Imo state makes me angry. Many people who are running to govern Imo state are not capable but I have seen one man who the cap fits. When it is time I will speak.”
