Ministerial nomination: Okorocha, Tinubu set to clash over Festus Odimegwu

The attempt by the former Lagos State Governor, Bola Tinubu, to extend the tentacle of influence to the Southeast may have pitched him against the Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha, who prides himself as the bastion of the All Progressives Congress in the region.

The political intrigues of the battle for influence in the region came to the for with the overt ploy of Tinubu to nominate the former chairman of Nigerian Breweries Plc, Chief Festus Odimegwu, as a ministerial candidate in the President Muhammadu Buhari cabinet.

This Day reports that the move is unsettling the Imo State governor, who sees his supposed leadership of the party in the South-east as being eroded.

This Day quotes a sources as saying, “Already, the former Lagos State governor, who is popularly called the National Leader of the APC has taken Odimegwu to the president.”

Odimegwu had served in the PDP administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan as the Chairman of National Population Commission (NPC).

He was fired by Jonathan following series of complaints against him as the chairman of that all sensitive federal government agency.

The Imo State governor is the only governor from the South-east geopolitical zone who is a member of the APC and supported the administration of President Buhari in no small way during the last elections.

The governor had during a congratulatory visit to Buhari as president-elect boasted that if not for the strategy that the leadership of the APC in the South-east zone applied during the election, which saw the voting power of the region diminish by over 50 per cent, it would have been very difficult for the APC to win the presidential election.

Okorocha, it was gathered, had been of the strong opinion that he should be allowed by the party to dictate the pace in the South-east because his splinter APGA was part of the merger that formed the APC.

However, the current move by Tinubu, some analysts believe, is part of the larger plot to assert his leadership and control of the party in all the zone.

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