PDP’s waiver to Kalu: A miscellany

IT is unprecedented in the history of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Last week, the National Working Committee (NWC) of the ruling party granted one of its founding members/foundational financier and former governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, (and three other stalwarts) especial waivers to return to the party and also contest next year’s Abia North senatorial election on its all-conquering platform in Dr. Kalu’s case.
Before this epochal intervention, a few charlatanistic fellows in the Abia chapter of the party who are merely provincial secretariat operatives had since 2011 when Dr. Kalu re-defected to the party consistently fed the public with tissues of lies on the non-membership of Kalu in the party he co-founded when most of these local champions had not seen the day! The absurdity of it all was that virtually all the persecutors and Kalu-haters were people biting the hand that had fed them in their days of anonymity and political insignificance.
Kalu’s beneficence to these ingrates remains a subject for future sociological enquiries.
All manner of combative efforts and vicious ingenuities were thrown up in the inexplicable criminalization of the routine process of entry, exit and return to political associations. Even the country’s Constitution in Sections 36, 37 and 38 recognises the citizens’ inalienable right to associate freely without any manacles by any individual or corporate.
The clownishness of the failed ostracisation of Kalu from the PDP family got to its summit when deviant references were made to his disrespect for the state’s leadership of the party and use of expletives that lacked remorsefulness for an imaginary offence. I doubt if there is any former governor in this country that has received invectives as much as Kalu from poverty-stricken people
who are suffering from acute stomach infrastructural deficiency and survive exclusively on government’s regular dole-outs.
Why were the oppositional forces against the return of Kalu frightened? Why are they afraid of him? Is it the man’s supranational political and economic profile that intimidates those vehemently opposed to him? As I had stated sometime ago, Kalu is irrefutably a political asset that is misunderstood and mismanaged by acrimonious people who ideally should be synergizing with him. This misperception of Kalu is the spring of his strained relationship with grassroots party stakeholders, so-called elders and ad hoc ‘Abia Patriots’ (empanelled for the defence of Gov. T. A. Orji’s controversial legacies). The global excitement and jubilation that greeted Dr. Kalu’s formal return to the party were unparalleled.
In all parts of the country, there was this messianic feeling that a man that would redeem and restore the conquistadorial pedigree of the PDP in the South East generally and Abia particularly has finally
come back. As to be expected, if anyone had the illusion that those opposed to Dr. Kalu would allow sleeping dogs lie they were mistaken as the dust has been kicked up again for the ultimate fiasco! I just hope that some people would not cut their nose and spite their faces in the unjustifiable witch-hunt of Dr. Kalu.
This political novelty could not have been possible if not for the sagacity of the party’s National Chairman, Alhaji (Dr.) Ahmadu Adamu Mu’azu, CON, Walin Bauchi, whose reformist agenda since taking charge of the PDP Wadata Plaza catalysed the come-back process for Dr. Kalu and three other key members of the party. It would be foolhardy for any party leader to ignore Dr. Kalu’s teeming supporters and followers. He is so popular in the South East particularly in and out of government that with his return the political fortunes of the PDP will experience a revolutionary
swell. It is this famousness of Dr. Kalu that is discomfiting the few vanishing critics of his domiciled in Abia. I doff my hat to Alhaji Mu’azu for his forthright intervention in the resolution of this
hypocrisy.
Even in the face of provocative asininities, Dr. Kalu remained calm and philosophical in addressing some of the phantom issues raised by those who shiver over his dominance of Abia and South East politics. He never for one day used foul language on the party or its leadership. Apparently, he knew that it was a question of time before the rascals in Abia would be cut to size as has happened. And despite the imbecilities by local war-lords, Dr. Kalu continued to demonstrate his unflinching support for President Goodluck Jonathan’s second-term candidacy so much that he created a massive banner encrypted with the Presidents picture and his in a captivating juxtaposition —long before other aspirants for various offices copied his creativity. On the heels of this was a bizarre effrontery by the Abia PDP wing which thoughtlessly took a full page advertorial in THE NATION ON SUNDAY sometime last month to discredit and disclaim their political godfather!
I wonder how they would be feeling now with this unassailable and unimpeachable masterstroke. The Kalu exclusion brazenness by the Abia PDP impolitic combatants reeks of rascality that can
only be associated with blokes on a weird mission of ragamuffin idiocy.
And to compound matters, the treacherous and traitorous elements involved in this pugilistic enterprise adopted bohemianism as the instrumentality of war. In the obscene process, they unwittingly exhibited and advertised their crass irresponsibility, amnesia and systemic small-mindedness!
Men that should ordinarily be gentle, taciturn and decorous became wild, intemperately garrulous and incautious themselves and employed a legion of loquacious chaps who embarked on unrestrained media frenzy of deconstructing and demystifying whatever Kalu stands for. Even his aides were not spared as my own abduction case is still fresh to be rehashed here. It was a free for all kamikaze kind of political warfare: everything was thrown in to diminish the Igbere icon and his vociferous followers like this columnist, who doubles as his media advisor among other official and personal professional assignations. In all the specious allegations against Dr. Kalu, there is no threadof substance. Even the propaganda lacks logic because there is not iota of truth in the falsehood that is usually mass circulated among jaundiced online portals and a few yellowish publications that are inevitably driven by survivalist instincts that endemically envelope them to the point of asphyxiation.
With the intervention of Dr. Mu’azu and the PDP NWC, I take it for granted that all the pre-waiver stupidities have become history and everyone on both sides has learnt their lesson. There are unlikely to be further oppositional brainwaves henceforth. I rest this case on the optimistic and reconciliatory note that the Abia PDP political brigandage that culminated in interminable character assassination of Dr. Kalu has, finally, come to an end. No more diatribes and innuendoes from Umuahia, hopefully, and reciprocally, too, from the Kalu camp!