The Governor of Abia State, Dr. Alex Otti, has fired back at the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Benjamin Kalu, describing him as a traitor who needs more tutorials.

Governor Otti’s reaction was in response to a statement credited to the Reps Deputy Speaker in which he was quoted as saying the Governor has not done enough to justify the huge allocations Abia State was getting from the Federal Government.

In a statement signed by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Ferdinand Ekeoma, Otti said 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 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: “The attention of Abia State government has been drawn to a trending video that contained a statement made by the House of Representatives Member for Bende Federal Constituency and Deputy Speaker, Rt. Hon. Benjamin Kalu, wherein he made some spurious allegations over the performance of the Alex Otti government and further made infantile comparison between the Governor and his two immediate predecessors.

“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 (8 months), including LGA, stands at N125b. Meanwhile, if we were to go by Kalu’s false claim of monthly sum of N38b, it would have stood at N304billion. Should a Deputy Speaker of a Federal Legislature be associated with such bare-faced lies?

“As at April 2023, a few days before Governor Alex Otti assumed office, the exchange rate stood at N460 to the dollar. At the present rate of N1,500 to the dollar, N3.2billion today is equivalent to N1billion 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% per annum, the situation would further exacerbate.

“Prior to Governor Alex Otti’s assumption of office, the minimum wage being paid in Abia was N30,000 and this was only going to those classified as core civil servants. Today, the minimum wage stands at between N70,000 to 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 Governor Otti’s emergence, the number of Abia civil servants stood at 31,000 according to the then Governor Okezie Ikpeazu (See The Cable, Tribune Online March 30, 2023). 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 non-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, Kalu, 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, 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 that piece of advice ought to have been given quietly and responsibly if the intent was genuine.

The statement 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. (Daily Sun)

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