Following the recent demand by a human rights advocacy group, Socio Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) for the probe of Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State over the erection in Owerri of the statues of presidents Jacob Zuma and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of South Africa and Liberia respectively, the state government on Tuesday said it has nothing to hide.
SERAP had, in its petitions to some agencies, claimed that the statues might have been funded with public funds estimated at N1bn.
It also castigated the state government for what it described as the “inability to pay teachers’ salaries and pensioners’ entitlements.”
But in a release made available to newsmen in Owerri, the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Mr. Sam Onwuemedo, said the state government would not lose sleep over the position taken by SERAP.
He added that the state government had, from the outset, given indications on the purposes of the coming of these African leaders and who invited them.
Onwuemeodo, who castigated SERAP for allegedly contradicting itself in the demand for probe, argued that SERAP should have stopped at its call for a probe to demonstrate its seriousness, “instead of passing judgment, thereby jeopardising what should have been an innocent call for probe.”
Onwuemeodo further insisted that SERAP should have waited for the outcome of the probe it called for and then make its stand known to the public, based on the results of the expected probes.
“I insist that that should have been the way to go,” Onwuemeodo said.
