By Emmanuel Iheaka
Former governor of Imo State, Senator Rochas Okorocha, has dismissed as false a report claiming that a magistrate court issued a bench warrant against him for alleged forgery.
In a statement endorsed by his Chief Press Secretary/Special Adviser on Media, Sam Onwuemeodo, the erstwhile governor challenged anybody with the said bench warrant to publish the document in 48 hours.
Okorocha noted that the said report claimed that the bench warrant was issued on October 9 following a petition dated October 8 and wondered how an investigation and other processes were concluded within 24 hours.
The former governor urged members of the public to disregard the report, adding that what the All Progressives Congress needs at the moment is peace.
“Against the backdrop of all these, we want to strongly state, and we stand to be contradicted, that no court, whether that of the Senior Magistrate or the High Court, had ordered or issued any bench warrant for the arrest of Okorocha.
“Now that we have openly made this denial, the burden now is on those behind the trending story of the court order for the arrest of Okorocha to unveil the court order or bench warrant. Let them make it public. Under normal scenarios, they should have published the arrest story, with the court order and the name of the senior magistrate in question. Perhaps they had forgotten to do that. Now, we are challenging them to make the court order or bench warrant public. We ask that they do that within 48 hours.
“We had equally observed that, in their story, they claimed that the bench warrant was issued on September 9, 2026, whereas the LMO REC’s petitions, which they claimed, had warranted the court order, were dated October 8, 2026. And the case number is CR/M/084/2026. In other words, the Court Order came before the Petitions and before the filing of the Case. This is what you get when people decide to deceive or to chase shadows.
“We also make hay to say that INEC, or the LMO Resident Electoral Commissioner, Barr. Ibejiako, never wrote any petition against Okorocha or asked that Okorocha be investigated. Nor did he indict Okorocha in his petitions. Rather, in his petitions, he asked the police and DSS to investigate a document in circulation that had portrayed Okorocha as the winner of the APC Primary in LMO for the LMO West Senatorial District. And the petition was dated Thursday, October 8, 2026. Assuming it was submitted the same day, was it possible for both the DSS and police to have concluded their investigations on Friday, October 9, 2026, when the story of the court order for arrest began to trend? The answer is “No,” the statement read.
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