The All Progressives Congress (APC) Tuesday night screened Rochas Okorocha, former governor of Imo state for the party’s presidential ticket race, ahead of its primary election slated for Monday- Wednesday next week.
The John Odigie-Oyegun-led presidential screening committee screened Okorocha at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel Abuja after he was granted bail in the sum of N500 million with one surety in like sum by Federal High Court, Abuja earlier in the day.
The senator representing Imo-west district has been in the custody of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over allegations of misappropriating N2.9 billion.
The APC presidential aspirant was last Tuesday arrested after a six-hour siege on his home in Abuja by EFCC operatives in whose custody he has been.
Addressing journalists after being screened, Okorocha who said he was coming straight from the EFCC headquarters thanked Nigerians for their show of love in his most trying moment of his political life.
“I will like to address members of the press in the near future concerning me so far, but for now I came for my screening, it was quite successful and I am the last to be screened at this late hour because I came straight from the EFCC headquarters and I must thank Nigerians for the support given to me while I was passing through what I am passing through.
“Right now, I am very much focused on the issue of my primary. It has been seven days out of the whole system. But now I am back, I want to focus on primary because of my love and passion for this nation. I believe that a new Nigeria is possible, and we can do it.
“Some of these things you see me going through are natural challenges associated with leadership. I see it as a comma and not a full stop in my life because after every comma, a sentence will follow,” he said.
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The former Imo state governor said sectional leaders can not help APC at the moment, stressing that those who are champions of their tribe or religion can not lead the party to victory.
According to him, only “those who are universally acceptable that can reach out to the north and south, a person that signifies unity and that is what our party should look at without sentiment because already we have a challenge.”
Okorocha who maintained that Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is not a threat to APC also said he was disposed to consensus if his party fairly adopts the method to nominate a presidential candidate.
He said: “Consensus is needed, but consensus is that some of us must agree that this is what is meant by consensus. There must be a platform where all of us can agree and say “listen, let’s look at what the other party is doing and who can really match the other party and most importantly who can cut across this nation.”
On his session with the screening panel, the Imo west district senator said: “I was able to explain to the panel that I am in this whole thing because of my love and passion for this nation. And I think I understand the problem of this country and I can find the solution; not theoretical but practical and I have one point of my agenda which is creating wealth for this country.
“Most of us do not understand that the problem of this nation is what we think it is or the statistics that we mention; the unemployment are all the problems of this country.
“We must develop the resources of our land immediately to create sufficient wealth; only when this is done will the productive sector of the economy make any sense and our foreign reserve will increase.
“The gap between the population and wealth is what you call insecurity, that is what they call the problem factor, out of school children. So, seek ye first wealth creation in this nation and any other thing shall be added unto you. Let’s stop singing the songs of statistics of inflation rate, it will not stop unemployment rate, those who keep growing in arithmetical progression.
“If you don’t address the disease which is lack of wealth creation, which comes from vision, I am coming into this business because of my vision not ambition; I have vision for Nigeria.”
