A former Governor of Abia State, Orji Kalu, has said Igbo people are better traders than politicians.
Kalu said the lack of understanding of politics and the indiscipline of Igbo politicians were responsible for what he called the political backwardness of the South-East.
He said the political fortune of the Igbo would have been better had their politicians approached politics like the Yoruba.
Kalu said Igbo politicians had a lot to learn from how a former Governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola, and his predecessor, Bola Tinubu, handled their differences during Fashola’s second term.
He said things would have been different if his own successor, Theodore Orji, had the same approach as Fashola.
Kalu, who said most of the Igbo elite were selfish, said the Igbo should blame themselves and not the Federal Government for their woes.
The Editor-in-Chief of The Interview magazine, Mr. Azu Ishiekwene, in a statement of Monday, quoted Kalu as saying this in a recent interview he granted the magazine.
According to Ishiekwene, Kalu told The Interview magazine that, “Let me tell you, there were more problems between (Bola) Tinubu and (Babatunde) Fashola than there were between me and Theodore Orji. But it is the discipline of the Yoruba that kept them at bay.
“The Igbo 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.”
Kalu recalled a conversation he had with President Muhammadu Buhari, where the President wondered aloud “why previous high-profile Igbo appointees had done nothing for the region.”
According to Ishiekwene, Kalu barred his mind on the agitation for the sovereign state of Biafra as well as the travail of the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu.
He also spoke on “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,” Ishiekwene said.
