Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State has denied reports in the social media that he beat his wife, Nneoma Nkechi Okorocha to pulp for confronting him over the non-payment of salary arrears to civil servants in the state.
An online medium, 247ureports.com, had alleged that the Imo first lady received severe beating from her husband for angrily seeking to know his reason for owing the workers despite receiving the bailout fund from the Federal Government.
“As if sent by some opponents of the governor, Mrs. Okorocha was said to have reminded her husband that the hospitals, courts, house of assembly and many parastatals were under lock and key because of up to seven months arrears of salaries owed them, and questioned the rationale behind the governor making the state a ghost state by not
funding projects and institutions such as IMSUTH, not paying salaries” and stifling the economy of the state”, the report had alleged.
But Okorocha, in a statement issued by his Chief Press Secretary, Sam Onwuemeodo, dismissed the report as “a mere fabrication”, saying the allegations were “unfounded and bare-faced lies”.
He decried the activities of those he called “heartless elements, who have invaded the social media for the sake of inflicting cuts on their victims, including those they even know God has blessed.”
Pointing out the lies in the report, the statement observed that the report did not say where the alleged incident took place, adding that the first lady had been outside the country in the United States for three months now “where she had gone for what the Igbos call ‘Omugwo’” (taking care of her daughter) who gave birth to a baby boy.
“She has been there alone without the husband (Okorocha). The husband has been in Imo since that period. So, where did the governor and the wife meet to begin to argue over the salary of Civil Servants to the extent of the governor beating her? The referenced incident must have only taken place in the imaginations of the authors,” the governor’s spokesman said.
He also emphasized that the government was up-to-date in the payment of salaries of civil servants and also up to the month of September for teachers and challenged his detractors to prove otherwise.
