Orji Uzor Kalu Vists Buhari, Informs Him of Decision to Vie for Senate Presidency

Senate Chief Whip, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, has disclosed that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) was on the verge of collapse due to mounting internal crisis in the past before being saved by God.

Kalu, who made this known to newsmen on Tuesday after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the State House, Abuja, also canvassed the need for the party to revive the Board of Trustees (BoT) mechanism to forestall such threat to its cohesion in the future, adding that he had already impressed it on the President Buhari to accept to fill the role of the body’s Chairmanship position.

The former two-time Governor of Abia State further stated that he used the opportunity of the meeting with President Buhari to officially inform him of his intention to contest the Presidency of the 10th Senate, if the office is zoned to the Southeast region by the APC.

He noted that the ruling party was faced with serious crises ahead of the just concluded general elections adding that Buhari’s interventions saved the APC from going under 

His words: “There’s one thing I suggested to the President that I did not tell you people. I suggested to the President I said we cannot allow you to rest. I’m going to be consulting the party. 

“The party should bring back our Board of Trustees or something that looks like it, so that Mr. President will be Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the party so that every four or five months, he will come and see how the party is doing. 

“We cannot just leave the party empty, it was done in the young days of ANC so that the President will still be part of the conscience of the party so that we will have somebody to run to when we have problems in the party because it was just God that saved our party, that is the truth. God saved our party because the quarrel inside the party was so much, the rancour is so much. It’s just God that saved this party. 

“So we need a man like President Buhari to be aside, every three, four months, we’ll go and drag him from Daura and he will settle party matters, we’ll put him back, he goes back there and continues looking after his cattle and rice and all the rest of them”.

The ranking Senator further revealed that he would be gunning for the position of the President of the Senate, if the ruling party decides to zone the position to his Southeast region of the country.

According to him, though the zone may not have voted for the party’s candidate and now President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, during the February 25, 2023 presidential poll, making him the Senate President would be assuaging the perceived ill-feelings among the people of the region.

Deji Elumoye in Abuja

Follow us on: