After the general election in 2023, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu hopes to run for reelection. However, residents in his constituency are putting that aim in jeopardy.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) group representing the Abia North Senatorial District recently announced that it was ending its support for the senator and charged him with "high-level anti-party actions."
Concerned Members of Abia North All Progressives Congress (CMANAPC), a group that organised a press conference in Umuahia, said that Kalu created the Action Peoples Party (APP) in Abia "to promote his younger brother's gubernatorial aspirations."
Because Kalu's younger brother, Mr Mascot Uzor Kalu, is the gubernatorial candidate for Abia APP, the Abia North APC feels that Kalu is playing two sides. The younger Kalu, who shifted from the APC to the APP, has denied receiving backing from his brother.
As opposed to this, Mr Kingsley Okorie, the Secretary of the APC Group, stated their opinion on Kalu's bid for a second term, stating that the former governor of Abia State no longer met the requirements to serve as the APC's senatorial candidate for Abia North.
He asserted that Kalu was prioritising the interests of his own family and the party over the needs of the residents of Abia, who relied on the APC to rid the state of its corrupt government.
By openly endorsing his younger brother, Senator Kalu, according to Okorie, is attempting to destroy the governorship campaign of APC Candidate Mr Ikechi Emenike.
He said that all APC members in Abia North will support all APC candidates, with the exception of Senator Kalu.“We hereby state our resolve to work against his second term bid.” Okorie declared, “We will not allow him to be using our collective mandate to ruin our future,” pledging that the group’s 20,000-plus members will do everything in their power to derail Kalu’s 2023 bid.
He predicted that Abia North APC voters will abandon their party in favour of the People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) Mao Ohuabunwa, who represented the area from 2015 until his defeat by Kalu this year.