On his part, the former governor, in a recent publication, challenged Governor Orji to go to a national television and tell the whole world what he did to him other than helping him become the governor of Abia State. “I have challenged him on a number of occasions to tell the world what really I did to him to warrant such detestable behaviour and enmity towards me. And if in the end I am guilty, I will apologise. I repeat the challenge through this column. Let him go to any national television and tell the whole world what I did to him to make him hate me with such venom. I have wondered why he has suddenly realised that I am such a bad person. Why did he not resign as my Chief of Staff if he knew I was a bad person as he would want Nigerians to believe?”
He accused the governor of spreading falsehood about him with the intent to tarnish his reputation. “His speech at every public or private event begins and ends with my name, as if he has no other business in governance other than to abuse Orji Kalu. Not only that: he goes about telling all kinds of naked lies in order to soil my reputation. He also goes to gossip to the President and his wife about me, telling them unprintable things, just to disfavour me. He tells anybody he encounters – businessmen and women, politicians, the clergy, traders, farmers, drivers, carpenters, bricklayers, the high and mighty, lowly people, and just anybody – that I am his sworn enemy. He also takes his campaign of hate against me to the Diaspora. The situation is really getting out of hand,” the embattled Kalu lamented.
The height of their soured relationship was at the run-up to the 2011 elections when the governor, who had decamped from the former governor’s PPA to the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, spared nothing to stop his erstwhile party – the PPA – and godfather from getting any elective position both at the state House of Assembly and the National Assembly elections. The contest for the senatorial seat for Abia North, which the former governor contested, became a political war front of sort as Governor Orji teamed up with Senator Uche Chukwumerije, who was gunning for a third term at the senate, to inflict what can best be said to be the greatest political injury upon the former governor.
Across polling units in the five local councils in Abia North, comprising of Arochukwu, Bende, Isuikwuato, Ohafia and Umunneochi, Senator Chukwumerije, who decamped from the PPA alongside Governor Orji to PDP, with the governor’s backing, severely trounced Kalu.
Political leaders from the zone, especially those from Kalu’s home council, Bende, such as the then Commissioner for Education, Chief P. C. Mba and Cosmas Ndukwe, the general manager of the state Environmental Protection Agency, ASEPA, whom the former governor had a running battle with; as well as Chief Emma Omokwe and Dr. Iboko Imo Iboko, all aligned with Governor Orji to cut the former governor to size. At the end of the Abia North senatorial election, Kalu polled a meagre 34,188 votes to Chukwumerije’s 80,000-plus votes. In all the three senatorial zones and the eight members of the House of Representatives which were up for grabs in that election, Kalu’s PPA failed to secure a seat, even in Bende his domain.
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