The Chief Whip of the Senate, Orji Kalu says he is not sure that Nigerians are ready for a president from the South-East geopolitical zone.
Kalu, a former governor of Abia State, said the February 25 presidential election is not the best outing for the Igbo people because the people of the South-East need the support of five other regions for one of their own to get to Aso Rock.
It was reported In 2022, Kalu had said it was long overdue for the southeast to produce a president.
“It’s overdue for an Igboman to become a Nigerian president, I believe the southeast should produce the next president and it’s going to happen,” he had said in the build-up to the presidential primaries of the APC at the time.
But in an interview with Channels Television on Wednesday, the former governor of Abia, said “this is not the best time for us” to become president.
Kalu said the people from the southeast “are not the best politicians”.
“This is not the best outing for us. For you to be president of Nigeria, you need other regions. I’m not sure that Nigerians are yet ready for a president of Igbo extraction,” he said.
“We have five other regions to be able to come up with votes. We do politics with emotions. I want Igbos to stop doing politics with emotions.
“I want them to do practical politics that will be able to drive Nigerians if we want to be in the community of the nation. We need to read the temperature of other regions,” Kalu said.
Speaking on the scarcity of naira notes, Kalu said he would have disobeyed the president if he was still a governor.
“The crunch was very severe. If I was still in the office of a governor, rightly, I would disobey the president and obey the supreme court.
“So, the president ought to obey the supreme court. The supreme court is the highest court of our land and I don’t accept anybody to disobey them,” he said.
Sixteen states, including Lagos, Rivers and Abia, are challenging the naira redesign policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The suit, seeking to restrain the federal government from giving effect to the deadline on the use of old N200, N500, and N1,000 notes, was initiated by Kaduna, Kogi, and Zamfara states.
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