Reciprocate South-East Support Through Inclusive Leadership, Igbo Professionals Task Akpabio
A group, Igbo United Professionals, Wednesday, tasked Senate President Godswill Akpabio to use his good offices to ensure equity representation of the South-East region in the nation’s polity.
THE WHISTLER reports that Akpabio, a former governor of Akwa Ibom State, Tuesday, emerged the president of the 10th Senate with senators from South East voting for him en masse.
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The professional’s president, Mr Emmanuel Ikechukwu-Jonathan, and secretary, Mr Cosmas Igata, in a release, urged Senator Akpabio ‘not to take the bloc votes of South-East senators and their last minute support for granted’.
According to the group, “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 46 votes as the 63 votes garnered by Akpabio would have been depleted by Orji and Izunaso.”
The group claimed that the votes gotten by Yari were a display of ‘the northern agenda to retain the Senate presidency seat which is against the APC zoning formula but unfortunately the ethnic card they played failed them’.
Recall that Igbo United Professionals, ahead of Tuesday election, urged Orji and Izunaso as well as other senators of the South East to rally round ‘Akpabio and the APC zoning formula as a contract to accommodate the region by the current leadership at the centre’.
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The association emphasized that it would do the South East ‘more good by aligning with the government at the centre for more effective inclusiveness’.
The group stated that, “It would not be healthy for South East to experience the kind of treatment the immediate past administration meted to the region in terms of appointments. “The only way to put it to an end is to align with the APC leadership programmes.”
The association 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’.
