A Former Governor of Imo State and Presidential aspirant, Rochas Okorocha, has declared that the recent episode between him and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission was politically motivated by “cowards who wouldn’t want to expose themselves.”

He accused the Imo State government of mishandling the security crisis in the state, stating that the proscription of the Indigenous People of Biafra was unnecessary.

Okorocha disclosed this on Thursday to State House correspondents shortly after a closed-door meeting with the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.).

On February 1, 2022, the EFCC filed N2.9 billion fraud charges against the lawmaker representing Imo West Senatorial District.

The development came just hours after he officially declared his presidential bid for 2023.

Speaking on Thursday, Okorocha said the fresh charges were politically motivated, which is why he was at the State House to seek the President’s intervention to avoid continued “harassment” by the anti-graft agency.

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He said, “I intimated Mr President on what is going on between me and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the harassment and intimidation that I’m getting from the EFCC, literally on a daily basis. And to inform him that I have a court judgment and two court orders for different judgments stopping the EFCC from harassing and intimidating me. EFCC has refused to obey the law.

So I have to come to inform Mr President that EFCC should be made to obey the law that established it. And without the law, there wouldn’t be an EFCC. And the desperations with which they go about any affair that concerns me should stop.

“The EFCC claimed that they recovered the sum of N5.9bn from my account, which the court found to be untrue. In other words, they were biased, and they prejudged me. On that basis, the court ruled and ordered that they should not interrogate and harass me further. This has also not been obeyed.

“Why I say it is politically motivated is that some people are instigating the EFCC to do this, which is wrong. But as to who particularly, the person must be such a coward who doesn’t want to expose himself.”

The former governor who explained that he was in the State House to “demand justice,” argued that he was not seeing the President avoid being investigated by the EFCC but rather to make the anti-graft agency comply with extant orders issued by the court.