Abia State Governor, Okezie Victor Ikpeazu, has taken a swipe at Senator Smart Adeyemi who described him as a “champagne drinking man”.
While contributing to a motion on Safe School Initiative in Nigeria last week, Adeyemi said Abia is governed by “drunkards.”
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The lawmaker was apparently responding to a social media post linked to Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, who is from Abia.
Abaribe had allegedly cast aspersion on Kogi State Governor, Yahaya Bello.
Speaking at the official presentation of Abaribe’s autobiography “Made in Aba” in Abuja on Monday, the Abia governor said he would not run after Senator Adeyemi naked in public.
Governor Ikpeazu said: “I don’t drink (alcohol) and I don’t begrudge those who drink.
“In other countries where there less problems than ours, people discuss big issues of economic growth, big issue of infrastructural development. They don’t talk about what people do and what people do not do.
“For us leaders, we ought to be mentors to the young ones. What you say and how you carry yourself, things you say and the time you say them speak a lot about how serious you are as a leader. And that should be the size of my response.
“I will end by quoting what Chinua Achebe said in his book: ‘if a mad man picks your cloth while you are in the bathroom and takes off, and you go after him naked, nobody will know who is mad.'”
Nigerians now reclining into ethnic enclaves – Abaribe
On his part, Abaribe said Nigeria is better off in the 1960s than what it is presently.
He said Nigeria has continually regressed and the citizens are now reclining into their ethnic enclaves.
He said: “I try to say a few things (in the book) that we might have forgotten. Why is it that we had a better life – we had pipe borne water, we had electricity 24 hours – in the 1960s?
“Now it is 50-60 years later, every person has to have borehole in his house. So he becomes his own NEPA generating power for himself; he becomes his own water board. Then I asked, why would life be like this? I tried to caption the reason why we are where we are today.
“I also tried to capture that there was a Nigeria, where it is said, in our former anthem, that though tribe and tongue may differ, in brotherhood we stand.”
He said in his early career life, he secured jobs and got promotions in places outside his southeast region only based on merit without anyone asking where he came from.
“Now, what we have done is that we have a big Nigeria that has continually regressed and now all of us are into our ethnic enclaves.
“And if you don’t go to your ethnic enclave, you won’t be able to survive in Nigeria today.
“In the book, I also look at the possibility of Nigeria that we may have assuming if each and everyone of us is committed to the country,” he said.
