Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha has dismissed as fiction the claim by the Senator representing Imo West, Chief Hope Uzodinma, that Okorocha and his kitchen cabinet plan to launch a smear campaign against him in a desperate bid to sabotage his 2015 governorship ambition.

Okorocha in a statement by his senior media aide Sam Onwuemeodo: “First and foremost, the allegation is fictitious. It can never be true because Governor Rochas Okorocha had ever before now grown beyond such petty practices some politicians indulge in.”

According to Onwuemeodo in the statement issued yesterday in the state capital, Owerri, “Governor Okorocha in all the periods he has been in politics has no record of smearing anybody’s image in the media even in 1999 when he was a victim of a serious gang-up by the powers that be in PDP in Imo to deny him the governorship ticket of the party.

“If governor Okorocha did not carry out any smear campaign against anybody when he was running for governorship on the ticket of APGA in 2011 and Chief Uzodinma from the same zone was running for the senate on the ticket of PDP, is it now that he is governor that he will do that?”

Onwuemeodo also asked: “Again, if Governor Okorocha did not carry out any smear campaign in 2011 against anyone when he ran for the governorship and with the PDP governor then as incumbent, with all the 3 senators in the state being PDP then and he won landslide, is it now that he is the governor and a performing one for that matter, and the Imo PDP staggering, thinking about which leg to put forward first, that he would carry out a smear campaign against anybody including Senator Uzodinma?”

He described the allegation as being “strange and suspicious,” adding: “We hope it is not part of the uncovered design to cause mayhem in the state over which Imo people have been vigilant. The governor has been too busy fixing the state and does not have the time to begin to plan smear against anybody.

“It is on record too that it is a group of politicians in Abuja from the state who have been launching fruitless media attacks against the working governor in their stiff desire to come back to power in the state Senator Uzodinma knows like most people, that Governor Okorocha is not such a man.”

•Photo shows Senator Uzodinma.