BEN ONYECHERE, Special Adviser on Public Communications to Abia State Governor, explains to Senior Correspondent, ISHAYA IBRAHIM factors behind the frosty relations currently existing between him and former Abia governor, Orji Uzor Kalu, with whom he claimed to have been friends in their university days
Ben Onyechere
Though he is not from Abia State, Ben Onyechere seems to qualify as an insider to Abia politics. He, for instance, claims to have a more than passive knowledge of the two political gladiators in the state – Former Governor Orji Uzor Kalu and his successor, Governor Theodore Orji.
Onyechere claims to have had cordial relationship with the current governor since their days in the Progressives Peoples Alliance (PPA) where he served as the party’s national publicity secretary. Orji was then a governor on PPA platform.
Along the line, however, Kalu and Orji were engulfed in supremacy battle in the PPA. Onyechere sided with the governor, and, in fact, defected with him to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). This wasn’t because he was friendlier with the governor. In fact, Kalu had been his friend since their days at the Department of Political Science in the University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID) in the 1980s. They were also business and political associates over a considerable length of time. At a time, however, they fell apart and have not been able to cement their cracks ever since.
In an interview with TheNiche, Onyechere revealed the undercurrent that triggered the rift between them.
“I don’t worship people; I worship ideas. Theodore Orji is a respectable man through whom I knew that one can make heaven,” he said of his principal’s virtue. “So, I said, if I behave like this man, follow this man’s mannerism, I can make heaven. The T.A. (Theodore Ahamefule) I knew for eight years is an angel. Anybody can attest to this.”
On the event preceding the rift between the governor and Kalu, Onyechere explained: “He (Orji) had served the Abia State government for eight years as Chief of Staff. He was the brain behind that government. He was the credibility that the government had. Kalu couldn’t let go. He saw an angel and felt he could use him afterwards. At a point, the man (Orji) chose to be on the side of the people when the interference started getting too much, when it started impeding on the processes of government.”
He also revealed the intrigues that led to the defection of Orji to the PPA.
“Kalu started planning to supplant him with his deputy. They started writing all manner of fictitious allegations. You could imagine a sitting deputy governor coming to party’s head office to testify against his boss. In each of those meetings, they would seize my phone because they thought I was transmitting information to Orji.
“They knew that I had a soft spot for the man. At a point, they wanted to use us (PPA executives) to deny him a second term. As the national publicity secretary, at a point, I announced on my own that Orji had been given second term ticket. Kalu and the PPA chairman started harassing me because I opted to be on the side of the truth – the side of Orji. But Orji caught the joke. So, he, Chukwumerije and I resigned from PPA. That was the day the PPA collapsed,” he said.
Onyechere, though previously a very close friend of Kalu, harbours resentment for the former Abia governor for yet another reason.
This, he alleged, was due to Kalu’s role in truncating Dr. Alex Ekwueme’s presidential ambition. According to him, in 2002, he was Personal Assistant to Ekwueme, former Vice President, at a time he (Ekwueme) was vying for the presidency on the platform of PDP.
He said of Kalu’s role in Ekwueme’s failed bid to rule Nigeria: “Another grouse I have with Kalu is that he was instrumental in truncating Ekwueme’s presidential ambition in 2003.
“At the night of the PDP convention (the event when the party’s presidential candidate was elected), Kalu hid himself upstairs in the Governor’s Lodge. He was wearing a sleeping gown and hid himself upstairs because he didn’t want to see us.”
Onyechere said Ekwueme had almost won the primary but for Kalu’s covert support Olusegun Obasanjo.
“This is because Atiku (Abubakar) had conceded and even supported Ekwueme under the arrangement that he would serve as vice president to Ekwueme. But we didn’t know that Kalu was working against Ekwueme. We didn’t know, until later. Some of the governors leaked the secret to Ekwueme. While we were acknowledging cheers from other people, we didn’t know that something was going on behind between Kalu and some Northern people who wanted Obasanjo,” he said.
