Senate Minority Leader, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe says the only Igbo person in President Muhammadu Buhari’s Aso Rock is a photographer.
He stated this while calling on the present administration to accord better recognition to the South-East geopolitical zone in its dealings.
Abaribe spoke on Friday while appearing on Channels Television‘s “Sunrise Daily” on Friday to discuss Ebonyi State Governor, Dave Umahi’s defection to the All Progressives Congress (APC).
He insisted that not much should be read into the governor’s defection until the 2023 general election.
The Abia South senator queried Umahi’s assertion that his defection was to bring the South-East to the “mainstream”.
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“Let us assume Governor Umahi is bringing the South East, as he says, into the mainstream because that was what I heard yesterday. What is the mainstream? Is it the Aso Villa that belongs to all of us that you cannot find a single person from the South East, except a photographer?
“Before every part of this country was represented in the Aso Villa, so when you want to do government business because sometimes government business is done from back channels, so if you have a problem or they want to do some consultations, you make a call into the Villa, you call to your countryman and say please can you tell oga this or that so that we can have this talk, there is none today inside the villa. There’s one guy, his name is Sunny, I think he’s a photographer.
“So Umahi is going to talk to who? Ok, because he is governor he can talk to Chief of Staff, he can go to see the president but what about others?”
Confronted with names of Igbo persons in Buhari’s Aso Rock, a defiant Abaribe fired back: “Where are they? Can you call them and ask them to tell the President A, B, or C?
“Everybody knows that we do not have someone you can call a proper person within that whole enclave you call the Villa.
“We had access, we do not have that anymore. Of course, you can have low-level people being appointed, but what do they do that you can say these people make a difference in our lives in the South East?”