Chief Benjamin Kalu attended the Amankalu Day which held today at Omaraugbogho Primary School, Amankalu, Alayi. The Amankalu Day is an annual cultural festival of the Amankalu people where all the villages in the community display their cultural heritage through dance, music and other expressions.
At the event, Chief Kalu expressed his admiration for the Amankalu people for choosing to preserve and promote their culture and heritage through the Amankalu Day. He further enjoined all other communities in Bende Local Government to emulate the laudable initiatives of Amankalu and undertake similar projects and festivities aimed at the preservation and promotion of the rich and diverse cultures and traditions of the various communities in Bende Local Government.
He pledged to support the event and its organizers with a donation of N150,000.
After leaving the event at about 5pm, Chief Kalu paid a courtesy visit to Eze Ufere, the Nkalu 1 of the Amankalu Autonomous Community. During the courtesy visit, Chief Kalu passionately spoke about his plans for the various communities in Bende Federal Constituency if elected as a representative into the House of Representatives. He highlighted his plans to build two constituency offices in Bende North and Bende South respectively and to set up institutions to preserve and protect the local cultural heritage.
He further stressed the need for Bende to explore its economic potentials of tourism and hospitality, citing Omenuko’s home and several other sites of colonial and precolonial slave trade as viable attractions for tourism in Bende.
Chief Kalu decried the existing welfare structures for the traditional rulers of the community. In his observation, the Ezes in our communities are not well taken care of and their services as our custodians of knowledge are not adequately recognized and rewarded. He expressed his desire to unlock tourism in Bende out of which all revenue generated would be channeled into welfare for the traditional rulers.
Chief Kalu ended his remark by assuring the Eze and the people of his intention to run a fresh style of representation at the National Assembly that would be consultative, accountable and truly representative through frequent town halls and other forms of engagement with community leaders.
In response, Eze Ufere, visibly impressed with the presentation and intentions of Chief Benjamin Kalu, declared his total and complete support for Chief Kalu’s candidacy. The traditional leader commended Chief Kalu for doing his homework and researching the various areas of strengths and weaknesses in Bende Community, saying that it demonstrated the sincerity of Chief Kalu’s desire to develop Bende.
The visit ended with the Nkalu 1 of the Amankalu Autonomous Community performing the ima nzu rites on Chief Kalu, an act that sealed his complete endorsement of Chief Benjamin Kalu’s candidacy for House of Representatives, Bende Federal Constituency.
