Facts emerged at the weekend that the main reason the Imo State Governor, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, hurriedly requested the State Assembly to hold an emergency session last Tuesday to repeal the controversial Abortion Law he secretly signed last year May 2012, was ostensibly to avoid being on collision course with the powerful Catholic church in state, ahead of the 2015 elections and to avoid the ugly political fate that befell his predecessor, Chief Ikedi Ohakim.
Sunday Sun findings revealed that Governor Okorocha whose relationship with the church had already gone sour over his style of administration, and apparently sensing that the controversial abortion law would further strain the tenuous relationship with the Catholic faithful that constitute over 70 percent of the Christian population in the state, had to succumb to pressure to repeal the law in view of the looming dogfight in 2015, and to placate the Catholic church which was instrumental to his gubernatorial victory in 2011.
It was equally gathered that Governor Okorocha who has since fallen out with his former political allies in the state, did not want the abortion law to be made a campaign issue by his political foes who have vowed to unseat him or his anointed successor in the next election.
Although the Archbishop of Owerri Catholic Diocese, Most Reverend Dr Anthony Obinna, said that he had nothing personal against Okorocha, he maintained that the church would continue to be involved in the political process to ensure that public interest and good was protected under any regime, stressing that the major interest of the church was to ensure that public funds were deployed for public good. He pointed out that the demand by the Catholic church for abrogation of the controversial law was driven by the concern that legalizing abortion in the state would inadvertently open a floodgate of abuses of the right of the unborn child and such law could not be tolerated.
Meanwhile, the Director Of Social Communication of the Catholic Archdiocese of Owerri, Reverend Father George Nwachukwu told newsmen that the State government had not officially notified the church if the law had actually been repealed or not.
“From our experience we are simply waiting to see what the State Assembly will do because the only thing we know is that the Governor has requested that the abortion law be abrogated and until that is done we will continue with our campaign against it in all the catholic parishes in the state and beyond,” Nwachukwu said.
However a reliable source within the Government House, who does not want to be quoted, told Sunday Sun that the governor knows the political implications of engaging the church in a fight over such a sensitive issue of making abortion legal in a state with overwhelming catholic population pointing out that it would amount to political suicide and that he was advised to repeal the law no matter the good intension behind it.
“The governor knows the implications of engaging the Catholic church in a battle because that was exactly what finished Ikedi Ohakim in 2011,” he said.
Culled from The Sun Newspaper
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