Categories: Politics

2023 Presidency: Orji Kalu Fires Back At Clark On Betrayal Of South-East

Says Southerners In PDP Are Supporting Candidate From North-East To Win 2023 Presidency
Kalu Identifies Shortest Route For South-East To Become President

EDITOR’S PICK:

EKO HOT BLOG reports that former Abia State Governor and Senate Chief Whip, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu has denied betraying the people of the South-East as alleged by elder statesman, Chief Edwin Clark, as regards agitations for the zone to produce the next President of the country.

Clark had called Kalu a “traitor” and the “betrayer of his ethnicity” for going beyond dropping his ambition to contest the 2023 presidential election into endorsing the presidential ambition of the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, from Yobe State in North-East

Reacting in a statement posted on his Facebook page on Thursday, the Senate Chief Whip expressed surprise that Clark didn’t go after the majority of other Southerners including governors working against the South-East regarding the 2023 presidential race.

“What did you say or do when all the aspirants from South-South and South West were buying forms to run against South Easterners who have always supported them,” he said.

Kalu insisted that he is doing his best to reintegrate the South-East into mainstream politics, stressing that Clark knows that the South-East cannot get the ticket of any party in an open contest as it is today without a gentleman agreement to concede it to the South-East.

His words, “In the last two years, I have been at the forefront agitating for a Nigerian President of South-East extraction, when most of them were all saying “Southern Presidency”. None of these actors openly said the South-East geo-political zone should have it. I was shocked that even the zone the entire South-East supported in unity including myself in 2011 and 2015 respectively, has the highest number of contestants without thinking of their brothers, knowing fully well that the South East zone has remained the only zone in Southern Nigeria that has not produced the nation’s president since the rotation convention dispensation that began in 1999”.

Kalu continued, “Coming to this late hour to support the South East is rather suspicious to me if they couldn’t do it two years ago. If all the aspirants from the South-West and South-South cannot support their brothers from the South-East, It is only politically correct to support the North-East geo-political zone, which to me is the shortest route for the South-East geo-political zone to produce the president after their 8 years instead of waiting for another 16 years.”

FURTHER READING:

Kalu went on to reveal that majority of the Southerners in Clark’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are actually secretly supporting a candidate from the North-East to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari, stressing that “nothing stops the South supporting only presidential aspirants from the South-East”.

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Sylvester Ugwuanyi