Arthur Eze battles Orji Uzor Kalu ... Denies saying Abia State stinks

 Orji Uzor Kalu and Arthur Eze - 'when the going was good'

 

By Osa Eresoyen, Anambra

 

Billionaire businessman Arthur Eze has refuted reports in SUN Newspapers alluding that he described Abia State as stinking at the occasion of the 23^rd Anniversary celebration of Abia State held on August 27, 2014 in Umuahia.

 

Eze, who is obviously miffed by the report carried by an “anonymous’ reporter  and published only in the The SUN newspapers described the story as cheap political blackmail coming from a man who is obviously drowning and needs help. 

 

Addressing newsmen this morning at his palatial Ukpo Country Home, Arthur wondered why it was only in SUN that the so called purported statement that “Abia Stinks” would be published.

In his words, “ I know that Orji Uzor Kalu is suffering from severe annihilation from a State he misruled for eight years (1999 – 2007). I did not imagine that he would choose to join me in his wild goose chase of smearing the personality of a Governor who is strategically repositioning Abia, recovering it from the ruins of the wasted years of Orji Uzor Kalu”.

Arthur Eze described as preposterous the art of hatchet job which Orji Uzor Kalu has perfected over the years. Continuing, Arthur said that he would not have said Abia Stinks considering that he only plied the Enugu Portharcout Express Road leading to Abia from Enugu. “I would not have said that about Abia because when I drove from the Abia Tower to the Michael Okpara Auditorium venue of the Abia Day celebrations, I beheld a completely beautiful vista, noting landmark developmental efforts across the length and breadth of the about 3Kms from the tower to the venue. People who attended the event (not a faceless SUN reporter who never attended the ceremony) would agree that I bemoaned the state of the federal roads, especially the Abia end of it where I plied to get to Umuahia”

 

The Statement read in part:

“I am a diligent party man, and only urged Governor Theodore Orji to take advantage of his relationship with the President to hasten construction of the Enugu – PH express Road. I also remember urging my friend the Governor to consider improved palliative measures within the Abia end of the Express Road as a help to the federal government while the construction lasts”.

“It is either Orji Uzor Kalu does not visit home or what he said in his paper is a reflection of what he wishes for his people, otherwise he ought to know that even if Abia is not superbly developed, no one who plies Abia Tower to Okpara Auditorium would rightly say that Abia Stinks. Rather, one would see the effort of the Governor in curing the city of madness largely caused by Orji Uzor Kalu. The serenity of the old market site, the beautiful scene of the newly remodeled Okpara Square and the cleanliness of the surroundings from Mission Hill down to Bank Road and Okpara Auditorium can only be described as “stinking” by a man of Orji’s Caliber”.

 

“If Orji Uzor Kalu knows how distraught  I am with him, he would not mention me in any of his childish political fights. Here was a man I had obliged marrying my sister thinking that he is reasonable. Till date Ifeoma, my sister; his wife has remained in the State of a vegetable, losing her sanity and being entirely useless to her kinsmen. The least Orji Uzor should do is to find a way of rehabilitating my sister rather than involve in his senseless charade against his own people”

“If I refused to take him to the President in his bid to return to PDP, it is because of my personal conviction that he needs to make up with his Abia people. I had told him severally that Party Politics starts from the grassroots and a man so widely rejected by the grassroots like him has no business in Jonathan’s PDP. I will not go back on that even if he uses the whole machinery of blackmail available to him to smear my personality”.

 

“I want to state for the records that I never refereed to Abia as stinking and will never say that. My honoring the invitation to attend the Abia Day celebrations was a mark of honor to Chief Theodore Orji, one honest politician I have encountered. It is as a result of my personal conviction, predicated on verifiable evidences that the current Governor of Abia State is gradually transforming Abia after several years of neglect”.

 

“Orji Uzor Knows that I have the capacity to drive him out of Nigeria. He knows I am not given to cheap publicity and would do anything to protect the integrity I have earned over the years. I am giving the SUN Newspapers and their agents, 72 hours to retract that obnoxious statement credited to me either which I will resort to tandard legal means to seek redress”.

“I urge my friends from Abia to ignore Orji Uzor Kalu as God in his infinite mercy , just and fair nature has already confined him (Orji Uzor) to a state of perpetual agony”.