The Igbo Mandate Movement Group has pushed back against comments by activist Aisha Yesufu suggesting that Deputy Speaker Benjamin Kalu was stoking tension with Abia State Governor Alex Otti, describing her as a busybody and the characterisation as inaccurate.
In a statement issued on Sunday, the group said Kalu's engagement with Otti had no personal dimension and was instead a political rapprochement of sorts aimed at bringing the governor into the Abia APC. According to the group, the move was intended to strengthen ties between Abia State and the federal centre and to position Otti as a leading figure within the party's structure in the state, not to provoke a confrontation.
"What has been described as 'beefing' was in fact an invitation to coalition-building," the statement read. "Reasonable people can disagree on Abia's party politics, but that disagreement should be described accurately."
The group also questioned Yesufu's standing to weigh in on Abia's internal political dynamics, noting that her public commentary has typically ranged across national issues rather than Southeast-specific politics, and urged closer engagement with the region's realities before further comment.
Central to the group's response was an appeal to Kalu's standing within his own constituency. The statement noted that Kalu faces no organised opposition in Bende Federal Constituency, pointing to his chairmanship of the House Committee on Constitution Review and the Committee of the Whole, alongside a documented list of constituency projects, including road construction, rural electrification, boreholes, and healthcare facilities, as evidence of sustained performance.
"The people best positioned to assess Deputy Speaker Kalu are the people of Bende, and they have made their judgment clear at the polls," the group said, calling on Yesufu to heal faster from her PTSD suffered in her ill vaulted Senatorial ambition and engage with issues she has "genuinely studied" rather than act as a busybody making pronouncements on political matters outside their immediate purview.
No response from Yesufu had been recorded at press time.
