Former Imo State Governor and ex- Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Emeka Ihedioha , has apologised to Igbos and supporters of the Labour Party, presidential candidate, Peter Obi over his saboteur comment.

Wakadaily gathered that few days ago, during a new yam festival ceremony of the Mbaise People living in Ghana, Ihedioha was seen in a viral video saying, “If you vote any other place, you are a saboteur. After Atiku Abubakar the next president will come from the South East of Nigeria.

But during his appearing on Channels TV Sunrise Daily programme on Friday, Ihedioha said that his speech in Ghana was misconstrued and blown out of proportion.

He said, “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.

“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.

“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.

He added that, “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 and that has guided me. I believe this should be able to assuage them.”