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From Okey Sampson, Umuahia
Governor of Abia State, Dr. Alex Otti has fired back at the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Benjamin Kalu, describing him as a traitor.
Governor Otti’s reaction followed a statement credited to the Deputy Speaker in which he was quoted as saying that the governor has not done enough to justify the huge allocations Abia State was getting from the Federal Government.
In a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Ferdinand Ekeoma, Otti said if Kalu was not a traitor, he would have been magnanimous enough to mention the administration of his former boss and benefactor, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu when he was mentioning T.A. Orji and Okezie Ikpeazu’s administrations he claimed received small allocations, since his former boss, Kalu got less allocation than his two successors.
The statement read in part: “It’s important to lay a foundation premised on empirical data, which would serve as a potent tool in curing Kalu’s deep-rooted deficiency of knowledge in financial and economic matters.
“Abia’s 2025 year to date FAAC allocation (eight months) including LGA, stands at N125 billion. Meanwhile, if we were to go by Kalu’s false claim of a monthly sum of N38 billion, it would have stood at N304 billion. Should a Deputy Speaker of a federal legislature be associated with such bare faced lies?
“As at April 2023, a few days before Governor Otti assumed office, the exchange rate stood at N460 to the dollar. At the present rate of N1,500 to the dollar, N3.2 billion today is equivalent to N1 billion in 2023. Given that Nigeria is import dependent, the devaluation has seen states gain in nominal terms, but very little in real terms, because key projects are executed with items and equipment whose components are acquired in foreign currency. This is why a road project that was built with N1 billion in 2022 would cost close to N4 billion today. If inflation is factored in at an average rate of 20 percent per annum, the situation would further exacerbate.
“Prior to Governor Otti’s assumption of office, minimum wage being paid in Abia was N30,000 and this was only going to those classified as core civil servants. Today, minimum wage stands at between N70,000 and N74,000. Kalu’s limited knowledge of financial matters and the economy obviously deprived him of requisite information and facts that could help him when confusion sets in. Couldn’t he have sought help instead of disgracing himself the way he did?
“Prior to Otti’s emergence, the number of Abia civil servants stood at 31,000, according to the then Governor Okezie Ikpeazu.
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“Today, the total number of verified Abia workers stands at over 67,000, excluding the 5,349 newly recruited teachers.
“What this implies is that tens of thousands of Abia workers, who have now been brought into the state payroll, were hitherto oppressed, isolated and abandoned under the guise that they were none core civil servants.
“Ironically, Kalu didn’t utter a word when this injustice was meted to Abians, including his constituents, because he wasn’t sure of the ambition he presently nurses, which of course, is the real motive behind his petty posturing lately.
“If Kalu wasn’t a traitor, he would have been magnanimous enough to mention the administration of his former boss and benefactor, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, when he was mentioning T.A. Orji and Ikpeazu’s administrations he claimed received small allocations, since his former boss got less allocation than his two successors?
“It’s interesting that after playing hide and seek and enabling unprovoked opprobrious media onslaught against the government for months, he finally unmasked himself, and his ambition, while pretending to be projecting President Tinubu, whom he drops his name at will as a strategy to advancing his selfish political interest.”
The statement went further to mock Kalu that with his usual aura of primitive arrogance that he is a leader in the country, yet, he waited for a public political event in Aba last week before playing to the gallery in the name of advising Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu to halt the demolition of houses in Lagos.
Otti stated that the piece of advice ought to have been given quietly and responsibly if the intent was genuine.
Governor Otti cautioned Kalu to know that President Tinubu knows traitors and sycophants when he sees them, stressing that it’s difficult to deceive the President with lies and incitement.
