Emeka Ihedioha, the former governor of Imo State, apologised to the Igbo people on Friday for his remarks at the 2022 New Yam celebration ritual of the Mbaise People living in Ghana.
In a viral video that received millions of comments, Ihedioha allegedly referred to those who are backing Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi as saboteurs.
Speaking on the Channels TV Sunrise Daily programme, which our correspondent watched, Ihedioha claimed that his remarks in Ghana had been misinterpreted and exaggerated.
Ihedioha apologised to the Igbo people and clarified that when he used the word “saboteur” in his speech, he was not referring to the LP presidential candidate’s supporters but rather to his family members, who he claimed were PDP members and were sabotaging his party’s attempts to regain control of Imo State in 2024.
Ihedioha expressed his regret and noted that it was not in his nature to be disrespectful, haughty, or use crude language toward people who hold different political views.
Ihedioha said ” I went to Ghana on the invitation of my people for the New Yam festival who are predominantly PDP members. Knowing where we are coming from as a people and knowing where PDP left our people, the promises made by APC who were surging to take over power. They promised us everything. They promised water, they promised light, they promised free education, promised free housing, they promised prosperity, they promised stabilisation of the naira and currency. You know that all those things were myriads of deceitful, fraudulent promises that have not come to pass.”
“So when you talk about the future of our country, you see people who are worried about being deceived into believing that you just wished it happened. So the desire for me for a PDP administration that has internal mechanisms of good governance cannot be overemphasized. So I spoke to our people consciously within the PDP to express the need for them not to sabotage our efforts in reclaiming power in 2023 so that Nigerians can see good governance.
“So give it to the Peoples Democratic Party. One thing about us is that there could be issues you expect in any human conflagration but we have ways of resolving those issues. We disagree among ourselves and we deal with them among ourselves. So incidentally the issues have been put in a different context and some persons and majority of whom love me, majority of whom believe in me, majority of whom have confidence in me, majority of whom have very huge expectations from me,” Ihedioha said.
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Ihedioha continued: “I never called any South Easterner or indeed any Nigerian who doesn’t vote for my party a saboteur. That is not me. It is not in my character. I believe in decent even from my own immediate nuclear family.
“My position was very simple, I was speaking to our people. I am an Mbaise man and the PDP has been very faithful to us. PDP has given us support, PDP gave us the opportunity to produce governor in our state and I said to them we have an opportunity and I called that they should not sabotage our efforts to reclaim power and that was it.”
According to Ihedioha “That was the context. And if listen carefully and I have found out from a number of persons have made calls and either to my person, my family, friends and associates and I have not had the privilege to watch the tape but if you do you will see the context. It is being blown out of proportion but I am responsible to people who show you love, people who show you confidence, people who believe in you and you also need to respect their feelings and so to all those millions of Nigerians, particularly from South East extraction who feel hurt by my use of language, I am sorry about it.
“I do not mean to hurt anybody and they have a right to obviously express their political opinions in any way, form or shape and of course, I have my friends who belong to other political parties and we still relate and we will continue to relate.”
Ihedioha said: “It is my considered view that people should take me for whom I am. People should accept me for whom I am and know that I am not a rude person. I am not a disrespectful person and I don’t use words that are uncultured. I thank the privilege of my upbringing that has guided me. I believe this should be able to assuage them.”
Ihedioha went on to say that he was confident PDP would win the 2023 presidential election.
He claimed that even though Obi’s support base was expanding in the South East, the PDP will ultimately prevail in the region.
Ihedioha claimed that Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate, has the ability to end the crisis engulfing the PDP before the general elections of next year.
Ihedioha said that the people of Imo state had found his seven-month administration to be “pleasing,” and he expressed gleeful hope that his party would unseat the APC-led government in the state in the upcoming governorship election.
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