The immediate past governor of Imo State, Senator Rochas Okorocha, has said that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission did not investigate the group of colleges owned him and his family before some of them were sealed off on Tuesday, Punch has reported.
He said the anti-graft agency did not interact with the colleges’ owners, as would be expected, before taking action against them.
He therefore appealed to the EFCC to unseal the Rochas Foundation Colleges and other ventures belonging to him.
The Rochas Foundation College and other Imo-based assets of the ex-governor were recently sealed off by the anti-graft agency.
He argued that the pupils of the colleges, most of whom are orphans, should not be allowed to suffer.
It was gathered that EFCC agents from the Enugu office, on Tuesday at about 6am, stormed the Rochas Foundation College, Owerri, in Hilux vans loaded with armed military and mobile policemen.
The school reportedly has more than 3,000 students, mostly orphans.
The EFCC also sealed off the East High College and Academy, Owerri, whose proprietor is Okorocha’s daughter, Mrs. Uloma Rochas-Nwosu; among other investments belonging to the former governor and family which the Commission sealed off.
Reacting to the EFCC action, the former governor in a statement through his media aide, Sam Onwuemeodo, dismissed the action as “a sympathetic scenario,” stressing that the Peoples Democratic Party government in the state and all its chieftains who felt “politically displaced from 2011 to 2019” by him had come together “to launch war” against him and his family and APC members.
“And that was why they needed INEC to declare their candidate winner, even when he didn’t meet the requirement.
“Unfortunately, they have instigated certain agencies like EFCC into taking some hasty actions following floods of petitions by them.”
The former governor, who faulted the EFCC approach, argued that, contrary to expectations, there was no prior invitation to the managements or proprietors of the affected colleges and other establishments.
“To the best of our knowledge, too, these colleges have not been under the investigation of the Commission.
“We have had the feeling that the sealing off of the colleges or any other structure as the case maybe, would have been based on the outcome of their investigation in which the management or the proprietors would have also been interrogated,” he added.
Onwuemeodo further stated that sealing off of the colleges and other properties owned by the Rochas Okorocha family before investigation was difficult to comprehend, noting that most of them had preceded the governorship of Rochas Okorocha.
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