An Opposed Political Rebound
Following the humiliating defeat which he and PPA suffered in the state, Kalu went into political hiatus. He took the time to attend to some of his business concerns which were under threat as public funds from the treasury of his state had ceased to flow in. Some of the contracts awarded to his chain of construction companies by the Theodore Orji administration were revoked, even as the governor went for a complete financial strangulation against his former boss’ interests in the state.
At this period also, the former governor battled to save himself from a possible return to Kuje.

Prisons in Abuja as Governor Orji caused those who stood surety for the former governor in his ongoing trial over alleged embezzlement by the EFCC to withdraw as Kalu’s sureties, so as to create a situation whereby the court would return the former governor to Kuje Prison pending his ability to secure other sureties.

It is recalled that shortly after the expiration of his second term in office in 2007, the EFCC arraigned Kalu before a federal high court siting in Abuja on a 10-count charge bordering on money laundering, official corruption and diversion of public funds totaling over N5 billion. The case, which is still in court, has dragged while his airline, Slok Air, also went under not long after the airline was linked to some of the alleged stolen Abia State funds. Also, in 2010 Kalu was questioned by the American police after a female friend died in his U.S. home.

A desperate Kalu soon abandoned the PPA and sought for re-admittance to his former party, the PDP, in a vain hope that his troubles would come to an end. The former governor pursued his re-entry bid with ferocious desperation because his life, businesses and political future depended on that.
But Governor Orji, who has the machinery of the Abia chapter of the party in his firm control, would hear nothing of Kalu’s return to the PDP and he left no one in doubt about his intention to block such return.

In February last year, the former governor declared that he had been readmitted into the fold of the PDP at his Igbere Ward A area of the state. He claimed that he rejoined the party on 17 January, 2013 and was issued registration number 9,787,945 at a reception he had organised for party members in his ward. The report of Kalu’s purported readmission to the PDP stirred controversy, especially in the Abia chapter of party.

Governor Orji’s response to the report was instant. In less than 24 hours, the chairman of the party in the state, Senator Emma Nwaka, addressed a joint press conference with the party’s chairman in Bende Local Government Area, Chief Ihendu Boniface, where they refuted Kalu’s readmission story. They brought the party registers of the two wards in Igbere wards A and B and a stack of unissued PDP membership cards said to belong to the two wards. Nwaka flipped through the pages of the registers and affirmed that Kalu’s name was not in either of them and as such, he could not have been readmitted into the party.