Nigeria Content Online

The Progressive Peoples Alliance PPA, Abia State chapter, has
cleared former Abia State Governor, Orji Uzor Kalu, to contest as its
presidential candidate for the 2011 presidential elections.

The declaration put to rest the controversy over the legibility
of Mr Kalu to contest on the platform of the PPA, after collapsing the party
into PDP and his failed bid to join the ruling party.

The publicity Secretary of the party in Abia State, Oliver Eze
Obieze, said the PPA has succeeded in convincing Mr Kalu to contest as the
party’s presidential candidate in 2011.

Mr Obieze, who spoke to the press in Umuahia, said after due
consultations, “we have been able to convince Kalu to come back to the party
and run as its Presidential candidate. We have given him the platform to run as
our presidential candidate.”

Right to opinion

Reacting to claims by a leader of the party, Olu Akerele, that
Kalu cannot claim to be a presidential aspirant in a party he said he had fused
into the PDP, Obieze said Mr Akerele had a right to express his opinion as a
party member, but that the party has taken its decision.

He said the successful persuasion of Mr Kalu to fly the party’s
flag was part of their outreach efforts to other members of the party who had
one grouse or the other, and that the party has not foreclosed the aspiration
of others to contest for the presidency.

Commenting on the state of affairs in Abia, he said the party commended the
federal government for deploying soldiers to the state to arrest insecurity
caused by kidnapping in parts of the state. “We support the military
intervention to sanitize the troubled Aba zone in particular,” he said. “We,
however, urge the military personnel so deployed to restrain themselves from
the abuse of the fundamental rights of the innocent residents and indigenous
people of the area.”