Governor Alex Otti of Abia State has slammed the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon Benjamin Kalu over recent comments against the current against the governor’s administration.
DAILY POST reports that Kalu had while addressing supporters in a viral video, rubbished Otti’s government, alleging that the governor’s two years in office was nothing to write home about.
Kalu claimed that the governor is receiving triple of the monthly allocation received by previous governments.
According to him, “What former governors did with the money they received from the federal government back then is exactly the same thing you are doing now, despite receiving higher allocations.
“The real miracle worker is President Tinubu, who is releasing the money to the states, not you doing the job.”
The Deputy Speaker credited the execution of infrastructural projects by Otti to the efforts of President Bola Tinubu-led administration.
However, Otti in a statement issued on Monday by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Ferdinand Ekeoma described Kalu’s remarks as lies.
Countering Kalu’a claim on allocation, the governor said, “Abia’s 2025 Year to date FAAC allocation (8 months) including LGA, stands at 125 Billion Naira. Meanwhile, if we were to go by Kalu’s false claim of monthly sum of N38billion, it would have stood at N304billion. Should a Deputy Speaker of a Federal Legislature be associated with such bare faced lies?”
Blaming the exchange rate for the current figures, the governor said, “as at April 2023, a few days before Governor Alex Otti assumed office, the exchange rate stood at N460 to the dollar. At the present rate of N1,500 to the dollar, N3.2billion today is equivalent to N1billion in 2023.
“Given that Nigeria is import dependent, the devaluation has seen states gain in nominal terms, but very little in real terms, because key projects are executed with items and equipment whose components are acquired in foreign currency.
“This is why a road project that was built with N1 billion in 2022 would cost close to N4 billion today. If inflation is factored in at an average rate of 20% per annum, the situation would further exacerbate”.
Accusing the Deputy Speaker of seeking relevance from President Tinubu’s government, Governor Otti said the president “knows traitors and sycophants when he sees them, hence it’s difficult to deceive him with lies and incitement”.
