Mbah, Otti, Umahi hail S’East for shunning hunger protests

Enugu State Governor, Dr Peter Mbah, his Abia State counterpart,   Dr Alex Otti, and the Minister of Works, David Umahi, have praised the South-East region for not joining the ongoing nationwide hunger protests.

Addressing journalists during a project inspection tour in Enugu on Sunday, the governor and the minister said the region’s decision to abstain from the protests helped to avoid potential losses and demonstrated the region’s goodwill towards the President Bola Tinubu-led Federal Government.

“I also want to take the opportunity to commend our people greatly for heeding our call to shun the protests and go about their business. We commend them highly because they understand the value of hard-work,” Mbah said.

“Sometimes, you may not be able to appreciate the effect of government policies immediately, but I tell you that some of these policies are well-intentioned. With time, if we can just exercise a little more patience with the Federal Government, we are going to begin to see the values of these reforms.

“We want to continue to call on our people to go about their business and know that if they destroy our assets, we are still going to use the wealth of our common patrimony to fix those assets. So, we must remain focused and continue to do our work,” the governor stressed.

In the same vein, the Minister of Works said the people of the South-East and the Igbo community all over Nigeria had made a loud statement by not joining the anti-government protest.

“We are not going to protest. We want proper integration in the affairs of this country. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Mr President, started it by making an Igbo man the Minister of Works, and appointing an Igbo Man as a service chief, among others.

“We have been excluded from governance and development in the past. But now, you can see infrastructural developments in the South-East. So, why should we protest against a man who has given to us what was never given to us before?

“I thank Governor Mbah very much for showing leadership not only in developmental strides but also when it mattered most. I appreciate other governors and other states that did not protest,” Umahi said.

On his part, Otti thanked the people of Abia State for not participating in the hunger protest.

Speaking on Saturday while observing the Sabbath worship at the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, No 1 School Road, in Aba South Conference of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Otti said, “I want to use this opportunity to thank you and Abia people who listened to my plea not to come out, pour into the roads and disrupt services and activities and probably visit mayhem on the people.”

The governor had appealed to the people not to join the protest when he received the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 election, Mr Peter Obi, during a private breakfast meeting.

The Indigenous People of Biafra had last week called on southeasterners to shun the protest, saying the region’s interest was in a referendum to exit Nigeria and to have the detained IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, freed.

The separatist group’s spokesman, Emma Powerful, said, “What we are interested in now is for President Bola Tinubu to release Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and give us a date for the Biafran referendum for Biafrans to decide their fate in Nigeria or an independent Biafra Nation.”