For Umahi and Kalu, South-east is Still Building Bridges 

Outgoing Governor of Ebonyi State, Mr. Dave Umahi and former Abia State governor, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu might have forgotten that the South-east is still building bridges as they claimed when they indicated interest for the Senate Presidency.

The duo had thrown their hats in the ring for the Senate Presidency without waiting for the zone to build strong bridges that would enable it to occupy top political positions, including the President of Nigeria.

Unfortunately for them, the All Progressives Congress (APC) shunned them and endorsed Senator Godswill Akpabio from the South-south for the Senate president’s seat.

While Umahi had pulled out from the race unceremoniously, Kalu is still ganging up South-east senators and whipping South-east sentiments, the same zone he had insisted that the time was not ripe for it to occupy the topmost political position in the country.

Expectedly, many Nigerians, particularly the members of the OBIdients movement have set the social media on fire, mocking them and reminding them in their own words that the zone didn’t need that position because “we are still building bridges across Niger, Benue and even across deserts and forests before it will be our turn.”

Umahi and Kalu, had vehemently stood against the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi and all his supporters from the South-east. They argued that the zone should support the candidate of their party, APC, and also build political bridges before aspiring for the position of President.

In his reaction to Kalu and Umahi’s Senate presidential bids, the Director of the Abuja School of Social and Political Thoughts, Sam Amadi had mockingly stated that the South-east was satisfied with the list of endorsed principal officers of the National Assembly by the APC.

Amadi claimed that people of the South-east were happy, saying, “We don’t want a distraction. We are building bridges.”

“People in South-east seem to like the APC list of endorsed principal officers of NASS. They are saying ‘we don’t want distraction. We are building bridges,” Amadi wrote on his twitter handle.

The lesson for Umahi and Kalu is that while they can receive a thunderous ovation for selling their people for a pot of porridge, they should not expect respect from the buyers.