10th National Assembly: Kalu Gave Tinubu 300,000 Votes, Says Group
National support group of the Senate Chief Whip, Orji Kalu has debunked claims by former member of the House of Representatives, Adamu Garba, that APC president-elect, Bola Tinubu got only 8,000 votes from Abia State.
The pressure group, known as OUK Grassroots Movement, described the statement as not only erroneous but ignorant clarifying that Kalu contributed over 300,000 votes to the victory of the All Progressive Congress (APC) candidate in the February 25 poll.
National leader of the group, Murtala Mohammed in a statement, yesterday, said aside his error ridden comments, Garba lacked the moral standing to advise the party leadership having dumped the party over selfish reasons only to return a month later.
Mohammed carpeted Garba over his comments while featuring as guest on a national television programme that members of the APC in the South-East did not do enough to deserve the Senate presidency.
He said, their principal, Orji Uzor Kalu, gave the president-elect over 300,000 votes rallied by the movement from across Nigeria during the presidential election.
He said Garba spoke out of ignorance because he knows nothing about the political structure put in place for Kalu by his numerous supporters across the country who were rooting for him to run for president.
“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 8,000 votes during the presidential election? It is not true. For the record, we formed the movement to mobilise support for the former Abia governor to run for president and we were able to mobilise supporters across all the 36 states of the federation and FCT, Abuja, but when it became clear that our principal was not going to run for president, we collapsed our structure for Tinubu and eventually we gave him over 300,000 votes.”
Mohammed who said Kalu’s political structure cuts across the whole country knocked Garba for relying on votes from Abia State and the South East to judge the contribution of the senate chief whip to the election of Tinubu as president.
He described the insinuation as as an attempt by Garba and his pay masters to jeopardise the chances of Kalu emerging as Senate president in June, saying the attempt would fail because it lacked substance. He called on the leadership of APC and the president-elect to disregard the report in its entirety as fake.