In a statement released by his Chief Press Secretary, Sam Onwuemeodo, the Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha, revealed why he is throwing his weight behind his Chief of Staff, Uche Nwosu to succeed him as governor of the state in 2019.
The influential politician asserted that in a bid to avoid being missed by people of the state on some of his landmark achievements, especially his free and qualitative education programme, he has chosen Nwosu to consolidate on the projects.
Governor Okorocha also said that the free education programme in the state, which some of his opponents had tried to discredit when it was introduced, has yielded obvious remarkable results.
He maintained that aside the school enrolment in the state snowballing from 381,000 in 2011 to more than One million in 2017, the state has continued to lead in JAMB applications for the seventh time .
Buttressing his choice of Nwosu, Okorocha disclosed that the state has also continued to do well in West African Examination Council (WAEC) exams, emphasising on the 2018 Senior School Certificate Exam (SSCE), which the state came fifth out of the thirty-six states in the country .
He also noted that his administration has more than 1,000 verifiable projects to its credit, while challenging his critics to disprove him.
“We have also been claiming and indeed, truthfully, that what Governor Okorocha’s administration has achieved in less than eight years, have gone beyond all that those who had governed the state before him had achieved, when you put them together. Nobody has also challenged us or tried to fault our claims.
“We have equally gone the extra-mile to say that anybody who feels that he has a contrary claim to ours should indicate.
“And the best way to deal with such claim and counter-claim is for those concerned to itemise their claims, publish them for public consumption, while we also publish ours, for comparative analysis."