BEVERLY HILLS, March 21, (THEWILL) – A former governor of Abia State, Chief Orji Uzor Kalu, on Monday decried the treatment meted out to him by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, despite being a major ‘stakeholder’ to the extent that if the party were to be a company, he owned 90 per cent of its stake.
Kalu, who governed Abia State under the platform of the PDP from 1999 to 2007, disclosed that he gave the party its first N500m and supported the election of former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999 with N100m.
Speaking during a dinner in Washington DC, United States, US, he said the PDP hunted him for his ambition to run for the office of the president in 2007 and for opposing the third term agenda of Obasanjo.
In the words of Kalu, “All of you know that if the PDP were a company, I ought to own 90 per cent of it because in 1998, I gave the party its first N500m. By then, I wasn’t in government. I also gave the presidential candidate, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, over N100m in 1998.
“How many Nigerians would have done that? Yet the same government, the same PDP, took my bank, took my airline, took my oil licence to put me out of business entirely because I proposed that I must run for president in 2007; I also opposed the third term, which they are denying today.”
The ex-governor, who spoke on many issues ranging from his trial by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, fight against corruption in Nigeria to the economy, lauded judges in the US for exhibiting courage.
He went on to challenge Nigerian judges to emulate their American counterpart.
