My life is in danger — Ohakim

A former Imo State Governor, Ikedi Ohakim, has raised the alarm that his life is in danger. In a statement Ohakim issued on Saturday, he claimed that there had been attempts to malign his name and assassinate him. “Following some recent developments around my person and the avalanche of misinformation and deliberate lies being peddled about me, I am constrained to issue this statement, first to douse anxiety of every well-meaning fellow who has shown concern and second, to alert members of the Nigerian public to a clear danger to my life. Throughout my tenure as governor, we never hunted political opponents. There was no political assassination, no arson, no official of government disappeared. “But contrary to the goodwill that existed while I was in office, I have since become an object of attacks and ridicule. Nigerians will recall that on May 15, 2014, directly after I declared interest to re-contest the governorship election of my state, my only house in Owerri was bombed in what was evidently, an attempt to assassinate me. As I write this statement, my portrait is still missing from amongst those of other former governors in a gallery created for that purpose at the Government House, Owerri,” he said. The ex-governor, who is currently being investigated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, added that there were attempts by some people to pitch him against the commission and other security agencies in the country. According to him, a group in the state, Alliance for Good Governance, who wrote a petition against him to the EFCC. “It was the same group that carried out the failed public demonstration against me in front of the EFCC Headquarters in Abuja. One of the issues raised in the petition was the same carried in similar petitions shortly after I left office four years ago. For example, the petitioners demanded, among other things, that I should be investigated for misappropriating the proceeds from the N18.5 billion drawdown from the Imo state’s N40 billion development bond which my administration issued in 2010. Ohakim also alleged that his voice had been cloned in an interview he purportedly granted to a radio station in which he lambasted some top officials in the security agencies. “The tape of this fake interview was then handed over to some of these key Federal Government officials,” he said. Copyright PUNCH