Dr Orji Uzor Kalu, former governor of Abia State has called for the scrapping of security votes for state governors, saying they are “excessive”.
Kalu said this on Friday in Abuja while speaking with State House correspondents after visiting Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the Presidential Villa.
He said governors complaining of lack of funds were not being fair to the electorate as the state governments had enough resources to fund development programmes.
“Most of these governors are doing very well and some of them also are living in the euphoria of the office.
“You can see most of them who are very active.
“The issue of crying for fund, honestly, in my opinion, these governors have enough fund to work for Nigeria and then to work for their people because if you check, the money drawn as security vote is excessive.
“They should stop that.
“Unless they stop drawing on security vote they will not have enough funds to work with and
most of them are living in absolute luxury, which is not their money that they worked out for.
“So it is impossible to continue living in this manner,” he said.
The former governor accused some state governors of spending a lot of on “needless trips” while stressing that governors should stay in their various states and work for the people.
“Most of the governors are even living in Abuja now, they don’t even live in the states.
“If you look at the books very well, in each trip they make they will take travelling allowance of N35 million, which is un-heard of.
“What are you going to do with that? So how are we going to progress? Not all the governors.
“I have gone through Rivers, I see that Rivers is hitting the ground; I have gone through Adamawa and I see Adamawa is hitting the ground.
“I have gone through few more states, they are hitting the ground; they are working.
“I don’t speak with sentiments; I don’t speak for anybody; you can see those who are working and those who are not working.
“Let them sit down and do the job for which they are elected,” he added.
Kalu, who is an industrialist, also called on the Federal Government to provide the concussive environment for the private sector to thrive.
According to him, the private sector will need government’s guarantees and access to credit.
He said, “We need power to be able to revamp the economy. The economy should not be lived only by crude oil.
“We can produce a lot of things and export, we can also do farming and we still can do our mineral resources and we need to diversify, that is the key.”
The former governor said some of his colleagues made sacrifices when they contested to serve the people.
“When people see people like us who have been governors, we made a lot of sacrifices in going to sit down there, because I can make much more money than sitting down there for eight years.
“It was a sacrifice that was worth doing for our people. It was done to improve education, healthcare and other services,” he said.
