Senatorial race mix-up: Kalu suspends aide over INEC listing

Former Abia State Governor, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, has suspended one of his Special Assistants, Mr. Sola Arogun, over his listing by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) senatorial candidate for Abia North in next month’s general elections.

This is coming at a time when Kalu’s other personal assistant has demanded an apology from Abia State Governor Theodore Orji and an online publication over a publication.

Arogun had filed Kalu’s papers for the senatorial election without the former governor’s approval, prompting his suspension.

Appealing for pardon over his suspension, Arogun, in a letter addressed to Kalu, pleaded for forgiveness, saying he acted in good faith.

He however, regretting not seek authorisation from Kalu before taking the action.

Meanwhile, another Personal Assistant to Kalu, Prince Kunle Oyewumi, has demanded an unreserved apology from Abia State Governor, Chief Theodore Orji and Naija Network News, an online publication, over a report that he had an issue with his boss over his listing as senatorial candidate by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). He threatened legal action if the apology is not tendered.

In a statement issued yesterday, Mr. Ebere Wabara, Media Adviser to Dr. Kalu, described the report, which also said that the former governor had obtained a form to actualise his senatorial ambition on the platform of PPA, as “malicious and wicked concoction by Naija Network News, an online portal.”

According to him, the report must have been engineered by Governor Orji and his aides to cause disaffection.

He states: “There cannot be a more ingenous plot that this from T.A. Orji and his men in their futile desperation to cause friction among Dr, Kalu, President Goodluck Jonathan, the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Adamu Mu’azu and the entire PDP leadership than this. The perpetrators of this evil know full well that the cordial relationship between Dr. Kalu and the leaders of the party is on the ascendancy and the only way to puncture it is to fabricate vicious lies.”

Noting that the report was a reaction to the declaration by Mu’azu that Kalu had been reintegrated into the PDP, Wabara said: “It is noteworthy that this devilish machination is coming on the heels of the appeal by Dr. Mu’azu in Umuahia last week that the grassroots member of the party in Umuahia should co-operate with Dr. Kalu who, he acknowledged, had good working relationship with PDP critical stakeholders in Abuja. This ludicrous attempt by Gov. Orji and his accomplices is in line with their serial anti-party activity over the years aimed at creating enmity between Dr. Kalu and the PDP leadership,” Wabara pointed out.