The Labour Party senatorial candidate for Ebonyi South senatorial zone, Linus Okorie on Monday said that the outgoing Ebonyi State governor, David Umahi was not qualified and competent to occupy the office of the President of the Senate.

Okorie, who represented Ohaozara, Onicha and Ivo federal constituency in the House of Representatives, described Umahi’s aspiration for Senate President as deceptive and dead-on-arrival.

The former National Assembly member who contested for the Ebonyi South senatorial seat with Umahi, came second in the result that was declared by the Independent National electoral commission, INEC.

He made this known through a statement signed and issued to newsmen in Abakaliki, capital of Ebonyi State.

Okorie, noted that Umahi’s intention for the Senate President position was not only incongruous and deceptive but definitely a caricature.

He cautioned Umahi for craftily drafting Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, into the project, adding that no Senator-elect or politician will accord any seriousness to the ambition.

According to Okorie: “We note with amusement Umahi’s backdoor craftiness in drafting Nyesom Wike, governor of Rivers State, to perhaps help him on the soon to be stillbirth ambition; the same man he once called “a thief with no intellectual content politics.”

Okorie, however, noted that though he supports the call by Umahi for the South East to produce the 10th Senate President, he reminded Umahi that his declaration as Ebonyi South Senator-elect was temporary.

“Let me reassure those eminently qualified Senators of Southeast extraction, especially Sen. Orji Uzor Kalu and Sen. Osita Izunaso, that irrespective of political party differences, I wholeheartedly support their quest for the emergence of a Senate President from the Southeast, and I will continue to do so,” he said.

He emphasised that Umahi has no legislative experience to have declared any intention to head such a sensitive position.

Okorie further avowed that the outgoing Governor Umahi is temporarily parading his (Okorie’s) mandate and vowed to reclaim it from him from the Election Petition Tribunal.