Owelle Rochas Okorocha, the Governor of Imo State said his parents were so poor that he had to sale oranges and second hand clothes to pay for his primary school fees and feed as well as cushion the level of poverty his parental nucleus family of fourteen was subjected to.
Governor Okorocha disclosed this on Monday at Imo International Conference Centre (IICC) Owerri during the empowerment of 10,000 Imo women with trading seed money of 100,000 each from the 305 wards of the state.
According to the Governor who sang some of the poverty hopeful songs, “We were so poor that I have to sale oranges, peeling them with razor blades and carried on the head with tray to an extent I had bald hair at the early stage of my life and I have to stop attending morning school to afternoon session so that I could sale oranges in the morning.
Later I changed from selling oranges to buying and selling second hand clothes. I was lucky that everything I touched turned successful. The second hand cloth business was so profitable that I bought a bus and lady’s motorcycle at the age of 14” he revealed.
Okorocha further said that his family passed through the furnace of poverty and lamented how his father and mother felt sick the same day and there was no money to buy them drugs talk less of taking them to hospital.
He noted that women suffer a lot to ensure good family up keeps stressing that his family used happiness, love and unity to surmount poverty, while insisting that poverty is a curse.
The Governor also said that he is empowering Imo Women as a mark of honour and remembrance of what his late mother, Ezinne Josephine Okorocha suffered during their upbringing.
