I’m not sure Nigerians are ready for Igbo presidency, says Orji Kalu

Orji Kalu, chief whip of the senate, says Nigerians may not be ready for a president from the south-east zone of the country.

In 2022, Kalu had said it was long overdue for the south-east to produce a president.

“It’s overdue for an Igboman to become a Nigerian president, I believe the south-east 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 south-east “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.”

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.