Senator Adeyemi Calls Abia Governor ‘Champagne-drinking Man’ During Plenary

Senator Smart Adeyemi representing Kogi West Tuesday veered off while he was contributing to a motion on the urgent need for the restoration and revalidation of the Safe School initiative in Nigeria.

After speaking in line with the motion for a while, he changed the topic as he described Abia State Governor Okezie Ikpeazu as a drunkard, adding that the Abia state people are unfortunate to be governed by a “champagne-drinking governor”.

The lawmaker was apparently responding to a social media post linked to Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, who is from Abia State, allegedly casting aspersion on the person of Kogi State governor Yahaya Bello.

Adeyemi is from Kogi State.

However, Abaribe said he was surprised that the Kogi Senator was making reference to a statement he never made.

Adeyemi had started his contribution with supporting the motion while casting his mind back to primary school days.

He said though he did not grow up to see Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, as premier of Northern Region, he said the era of Sarduana, “Our children were given cartons of peak milk, they were well taken care of, the northern region was a very peaceful place.”

He said education flourished under Bello.

“Today we do not even talk about giving milk to our children in school. We are talking about the safety of our children.

“If we were not taken care of with those programs initiated by Sarduana maybe most of us would not be here.

“If there is one thing we must focus on it is the welfare of our children the wellbeing of the leaders of tomorrow must be of concern to all of us.

“If we can not give them those things that we were given while growing up so the little we can do for them is to keep them safe.”

He called on Governors to do all that they can, because Nigeria is such a large nation that the Federal Governmemt alone cannot do it to be able to police all the schools.

Just then he veered of by saying, “Despite that some governors are doing their best, we are lucky to have a governor who has taken the issue of security as a serious priority.

“We are bordered by nine states, but we had an experience of the unfortunate incidents that are happening in neighboring states.

“Some governors are committed to the protection of their people, in my state the governor awarded contracts for the renovations of schools and provides security services to them.

“In some states of Nigeria today, where we have highly intelligent people, highly educated people, very enterprising people, like Abia – they are governed by drunkards.

“The governor of Abia is a champagne drinking man. Abia people are impoverished more than ever before. Abia people are unfortunate.”

At this point, Senate President Ahmad Lawan cautioned him against the use of abusive language.

In his response, Abaribe expressed surprise over Adeyemi’s “drunkard” comment and urged his colleague to apologize to Governor Okezie Ikpeazu.

Abaribe said: “Mr President I will like to make a clarification. Unfortunately, what has happened here today is one of the problems that you see on social media. I never made any comments on the governor of Kogi State. Never.

“What has happened is what we see going on today. People write something and tag your name to it. And if you don’t ask question, you will not know whether you actually said it or not.

“And I see so many things tag to me but I don’t talk. The last time I saw Nuhu Ribadu, I also spoke to him. Something was tag to his name that was very deleterious.

“I’m very surprised that my good friend and colleague decided to open up on the governor of Abia for something I never said.”

Lawan interjected, saying the air was cleared now and asked Abaribe to address the motion.

Abaribe agreed but said Smart owes an apology to the governor of Abia for the very bad statement made that has no basis.
Source: Guardian