From Ogbonnaya Ndukwe, Aba
Former Commissioner for Works in Abia State Chief George Nnanna Kalu, who recently dumped the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) for the All Progressives Congress (APC), has said that the management style of the Okezie Ikpeazu-led PDP administration in the State lacks direction.
He explained that the alleged drift by Abia away from the dreams of its founding fathers made him to defect from his once darling party.
The ex-Commissioner accused the government of awarding bogus contracts it could not handle, accumulating debts through non-payment of workers’ salaries while those at the corridors of power lived in affluence with the poor masses wallowing in abject poverty and decayed infrastructure.
In an interview with Daily Sun in Aba, after his defection at Camp Neya Igberre residence of the Senate Chief Whip, Dr Orji Uzor Kalu, some days back, he said the current leadership of the State was inept and operating on lies and falsehood.
According to him, the recent ‘selection of candidates’ for the December 18 Local Government elections, has exposed the candidates as mere tools in the hands of the governor.
He wondered why the party will be accusing the federal government of highhandedness while it was engaging in the annihilation and total destruction of those it was elected to protect and sustain in Abia.
Nnanna Kalu said in the run up to the primaries, the State PDP leadership had a bonanza of milking the many aspirants seeking for the office of their hard earned funds with those not having money resorting to borrowing with high collaterals to be able to pay the stipulated N1.5 million mandatory declaration of interest non-refundable cash deposits for chairmanship while that of councillorship positions was N500,000.
He said time had come to liberate Abia from the hands of those that did not mean well for the State and its development, adding that the APC will ensure that cohorts of the governor and his agents were not imposed on the people as council chairmen.
Nnanna Kalu and former Finance Commissioner in Ikpeazu’s Government, Chief Obinna Oriaku, were recently received into the progressives’ family by Senate Whip, on behalf of the APC National Caretaker Committee Chairman, Governor Mai Mala Buni of Yobe State.