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From Okey Sampson, Umuahia
A chieftain of the Labour Party (LP) in Abia State, Chief Iheanyi Chinasa, has challenged the deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, Benjamin Kalu to an independent media verification of the projects he claimed to have attracted for his constituents.
In a statement, Chinasa, who hails from the same Bende federal constituency as Kalu said he had looked at what the deputy speaker presented online as projects he has attracted for the area and found them to be untrue.
“Just looking at the submissions that were made online as projects being attracted and executed by the deputy speaker, I find them very spurious.
“Therefore, my demand as a citizen and a constituent of Bende federal constituency, is to have an independent media verification audit to all the projects. Let’s send an independent media committee. If he’s not willing to sponsor it, I will pay for it. I will sponsor it myself. Let them go and confirm those purported submissions by the deputy speaker.
“The deputy speaker has given us a long list of all the things he has done. Now, I don’t want to talk about the things that are in the budget that I have seen for Bende Federal Constituency that I didn’t see on the list. I don’t even talk about where it is for now. But I need the ones on his list to be verified by an independent body.
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“Starting from the Nkpa Bridge project he claimed to have attracted down to the classrooms he claimed to have built, every single one of them. Let’s have an independent body of journalists and media personalities go down there with a video and show us each of those projects. Let’s know if he’s telling us the truth,” he said.
Chinasa, the Abia State Liaison Officer in Abuja, noted it was not enough for Kalu to accuse Governor Alex Otti of not using the money the state received fully, adding that the deputy speaker himself should also account for all the money that passed through his processes.
He said Kalu should come clean and tell his constituents the cost of each of those projects to be able to know whether they tally with the amount of money allocated for them.
“Kalu should tell his constituents the cost of each of the projects he claimed to have attracted and let’s go down and do an independent verification and see if the cost even corresponds with the state of affairs or the state of the project as enumerated here.
“He often touts himself as the number six man in the country. His powers purported to be equivalent to about 60 members in the house, what has he really done in Bende for our people?
“I have seen the empowerment done by other members of the House, the deputy speaker cannot even be equal. I have seen empowerment done in other states, like Edo and Lagos and one will be tempted to ask questions,” Chinasa said.
