The National support group of the Senate Chief Whip, Orji Kalu has debunked claims by a former member of the House of Representatives, Hon. Adamu Garba that the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu got only 8,000 votes from Abia State.
The Political pressure group known as “OUK Grassroots Movement” described Garba’s statement as not only erroneous but ignorant clarifying that Kalu, a former Abia Governor and Senate President hopeful contributed over 300,000 votes to the victory of the All Progressive Congress (APC) during the presidential elections.
The group’s national leader, Alhaji Murtala Mohammed in a press release on Tuesday said Garba has no moral standing to advise the party leadership as he had recently dumped the party only to return a month after.
Murtala flayed Garba’s comment on a certain programme of national television where he said that members of the APC in the South-East did not do enough to give them the right to demand that the office of the Senate President should come to the South-East.
He added that Garba spoke out of ignorance about the level of political structure put in place for the Senate Chief Whip by his numerous supporters across the country who wanted the former Abia Governor to run for President ahead of the 2023 election.
He said that the comment was a deliberate attempt to jeopardize Kalu’s chances of emerging as the next Senate President in June, adding that such an attempt will fail.
He called on the leadership of APC and the President-Elect to disregard the comment.
The statement read thus: “Our attention has been drawn to a fake news story flying on social media platforms that Orji Uzor Kalu gave Tinubu only 8000 votes during the Presidential election. That’s an insult to the Distinguished Senator and former Governor who has the capacity to run for President. How can someone who has a national political structure give Tinubu only 8000 votes during the Presidential election? It’s not true
“For the record, we formed a Movement to mobilize support for the former Abia Governor to run for President and we were able to mobilize supporters across all the 36 States of the federation and FCT, Abuja, but when it became clear that our principal is not going to run for President, we collapsed our structure for Tinubu and eventually we gave Tinubu over 300,000 votes
“What I am saying is that the political structure of Orji Uzor Kalu cuts across the whole country because he has followers and supporters all over the 36 States and FCT Abuja, so it is wrong to use votes from Abia State and the Southeast geopolitical zone to judge his contribution to the election of Tinubu as President during February Presidential election.”
