Akpabio: Be magnanimous in victory, Igbo group tells senate president
From Magnus Eze, Enugu
Igbo United Professionals (IUP) has applauded the emergence of former Akwa Ibom State Governor, Godswill Akpabio, as the President of the Senate of the 10th National Assembly.
The group also urged the new Chairman of the federal legislature to be magnanimous in victory by ensuring the inclusion of senators from the South East that subsumed their aspirations for him.
A statement by the President of the association, Emmanuel Ikechukwu-Jonathan, and the Secretary, Cosmas Igata, in Enugu, said he should not take the block votes of South East senators and their last-minute support for granted.
The association explained, “Had it been that Sen. Orji Uzor Kalu and Sen. Osita Izunazo did not step down for Akpabio, Senator Abdulazeez Yari, would have won the seat of the President of the Senate with his 45 votes as the 63 votes garnered by Akpabio would have been shared by the three contenders from Southern Nigeria and that would not have been healthy.”
Noting that Yari’s aspiration was against the zoning formula of the All Progressives Congress (APC), it said that the ethnic card failed the former Zamfara State Governor and his supporters.
Igbo United Professionals was one of the foremost groups from the South East that led the advocacy for support for Akpabio and the APC zoning arrangement as a bet for the accommodation of the South East by the current leadership at the centre.
The association emphasized that it will do the zone better than harm by aligning with the government at the centre for more effective inclusiveness.
The group further maintained that it would not be healthy for South East to experience the kind of treatment the immediate past administration meted on the geopolitical zone adding that the only way to put that to an end was to align with the APC leadership programmes.
It then appealed to Nigerians to be fair to the South East in the affairs of Nigeria considering the saying that “an injury to one is an injury to all.”
