Row over ex-governor Orji Kalu’s return to PDP

Former governor of Nigeria’s eastern state of Abia, Orji Uzor Kalu claimed he has returned to the PDP after an agreement with other founding members of the party, urging him to return.
But Mr Emma Nwaka, the Abia PDP Chairman dismissed Kalu’s claim on the grounds that the party executives at Orji’s ward had all resigned their positions and could not have re-admitted Kalu.
Nwaka said that all the party’s executive members in Igbere Wards `A’ and `B’ resigned their positions on January 10, this year. He also claimed that Chief Amaechi Ukoh, the Igbere Ward `A’ Chairman who issued the card had resigned and submitted the party’s cards and register to the state’s PDP Secretariat.
Speaking with newsmen at his Igbere country home, near Umuahia, Kalu claimed he was readmitted on 16 January by his Igbere Ward A, in Bende council of Abia state.
He said there was no going back on his decision as the PDP executive in Igbere Ward `A’ had already issued him a membership card.
He explained that he returned to the PDP to re-jig the party and realise the dreams of its founding fathers.
“All the founding members of PDP have met and decided that we should all go back to our party because if we continue to leave it to the animals, they will put it into shame and Nigerians no longer have confidence in the party,’’ Kalu said.
The Igbere Ward A chairman, Ukoh was at Kalu’s home in the company of other officials of the ward on Saturday. Ukoh told reporters that he has not resigned as a ward official of the PDP, noting that he was in hiding because the PDP state officials were using military men to trail them in their homes.
Kalu condemned the actions of PDP leadership in Abia over what he described as “false propaganda on my re-admission”.
“I already have PDP card number 9787845 and there is no going back’’.
He said that such un-coordinated propaganda presented the state PDP leadership as not only irresponsible but fake.
“We want all these deceits in Abia State to stop because we are going to fight for democracy, we are going to remove inept government and put a credible one in the state.
“All those living by propaganda would soon stop; corruption will stop, all the manipulation of Abia people will stop.The stealing going in the state will stop and we will call for social justice in Abia,’’ he said.
Responding to some questions later, Kalu said he returned to PDP because former President Olusegun Obasanjo vacated the position of PDP Board of Trustee chairmanship, stressing that he left the party because of Obasanjo.
“I kept to my position that as long as Obasanjo remained the PDP BOT chairman, I will not return to the party and now that he had left I am back and will continue to make useful contributions for the growth of the party,’’ he said.
Kalu said that the only problem he had with Governor Theodore Orji was that he was not delivering quality leadership to the state.
“The members of Abia House of Assembly, commissioners and other people are all complaining that they are not getting anything.
Kalu, 53 years old in April, had left the party in 2003, floating a new political party called the Progressive Peoples Alliance, PPA.