In what appears to be a sort of damage control, the Ebonyi State Governor, Dave Umahi has on Tuesday declared the former Secretary to the State Government(SSG) Prof Benard Ifeanyi Odoh sacked.
Odoh in a letter to the Governor on Monday, tendered his resignation, stating some anomalies in the Umahi led government, in which he stressed that all is not well with the administration as the Umahi administration according to him has not offered a conducive atmosphere for members of Executive Council and himself to sincerely express their views on sensitive policy matters.
Odoh was immediately replaced with Dr. Hygenius Nwokwu who was appointed by Governor Dave Umahi less than six hours after Odoh’s resignation.
However, on Tuesday night, The Sight News gathered that the Governor nullified Odoh’s letter of resignation on the grounds that the letter was written on a public holiday and therefore did not hold any valid meaning.
In a statement obtained from the Facebook account of one of Umahi’s Technical Adviser, Mr. Francis Nwaze, it stated that the Governor announced the sack in the government house, Abakaliki during a massive solidarity rally by the people of Ezza Ezekuna, the most populous clan in the state.
The statement also noted that Governor Umahi said he has invalidated the
resignation letter earlier submitted by the sacked SSG because the
letter was written on a public holiday and therefore did not hold any
valid meaning.
According to the statement, Umahi said, “In my capacity as the Governor of Ebonyi state, I hereby nullify the purported letter of resignation earlier written by Prof Odoh because he wrote the letter on a public holiday and we all know that by law, any letter of resignation done on a public holiday does not hold water. I also here and now announce his sack as the Secretary to the State Government, SSG”.
Nwaze further said that the Governor lamented that despite the love he showed the former SSG, even though he was not a member of his political party, the PDP at the time of his appointment, the young man still stabbed him at the back.
“I appointed him SSG because I felt he was a responsible Ezza man.Many people faulted his appointment because he was not a PDP member but an APGA senatorial candidate in 2015 general election. Since his appointment, I have shown him love and assisted him in so many ways. I called him to my country home and told him that case of murder is a very serious one, I asked him to see me but he switched off his phone throughout the Easter period and the next thing I heard was his resignation letter flying up and down in the social media” he ended.
