Why Igbos are their own worst enemies – Orji Kalu

Igbos who have often blamed the Federal Government for the backwardness in the South East have been told that they have no one but themselves to blame for their woes.

Former Abia State Governor and businessman, Orji Uzor Kalu, said in the recent edition of The Interviewthat, “Igbos are their own worst enemies.”
He said a number of the elite in the region are not only selfish, but that they also get their politics wrong.

    “Let me tell you,” he said in an emotion-laden voice, “there were more problems between (Asiwaju Bola) Tinubu and (Babatunde) Fashola, than there were between me and TA (Theodore Ahamefule Orji). But it is the discipline of the Yorubas that kept them at bay. Igbos have no discipline in terms of politics. They are very good traders; they’re good in anything they do, but they don’t understand politics.”

Mr. Kalu’s was referring to the fractured relationship between Mr. Tinubu and Mr. Fashola in the latter’s second term as governor of Lagos State, and comparing it to his own internecine war with his successor, Theodore A. Orji, which led to the extinction of the Progressive Peoples Alliance, the party he founded.

In the interview, described by the Managing Director/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview, Mr. Azu Ishiekwene, as “the political equivalent of the ogbunigwe (Biafran improvised explosives),” Mr. Kalu illustrated his point with a conversation he claimed to have had with President Muhammadu Buhari, who wondered aloud why previous high profile Igbo appointees had done nothing for the region.

Mr. Kalu also spoke on the agitation for a state of Biafra and the travails of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu; his relationship with former President Ibrahim Babangida and former Governor Ikedim Ohakim; the recent statement of former Governor Peter Obi; and allegations that while he governed Abia for eight years, his mother ruled.

In this edition, Tolu Ogunlesi engages Boko Haram leader, Abu Shekau in an “exchange” of letters by email and Nigeria’s matriarch of Agony Aunts, Bunmi Sofola, gives an insight into what happens to love in a recession.

In one of his first major interviews, the Managing Director of Nigeria’s mortgage refinance company, Prof. Charles Inyangete, also shared secrets on how you can make mortgage work for you.
“It’s a sure medicine for this recession,” Mr. Ishiekwene said in a statement released on Monday.