By Anayo Okoli
AHEAD of the primaries for 2011 elections, crisis is looming in some chapters of Abia State PDP as some stakeholders and aspirants have dumped the party, alleging exploitation and imposition of candidates by the leadership of the party in the state.

Some of the aspirants for the various elective offices in the state under the party platform, are already gripped with fear that there will be no primaries.

They alleged that the leadership of the party had already made up its mind on those to give the ticket to.

They feared that if there was anything to be called primaries, it would be anything but free and fair.

Specifically affected is the Abia North senatorial district where a chieftain of the party and senatorial aspirant for the zone, Mr. Pedro Madukwe, a lawyer, has resigned from the party and joined the Progressive Peoples Alliance, PPA, to actualise  his senatorial ambition.

Already, Madukwe tendered his letter of resignation from PDP through his ward chairman, just as he has purchased the expression of interest form to pursue his ambition of becoming the senator for Abia North zone on the platform of his new party.

“The PDP in Abia North is full of exploitation and the stakeholders in the area are worried and have nominated some of them to see Governor Theodore Orji and protest the exploitation,” he said.

Specifically, Madukwe’s grouse, according to him, is that after paying N2.2 million official nomination fee for aspirants for the office of the senate, the leadership of the party in Abia North, which incidentally is the home constituency of the state chairman of the party, Chief Emma Nwaka, has asked them to pay another N2 million.

He also alleged that the governor and leadership of the party in the state had concluded on who they would give the ticket.

Madukwe equally alleged that the leadership of the party and the governor had agreed to give the tickets to those who gave the governor soft-landing when he joined the party.

According to him, all those being favoured by the party leadership in the state are mainly incumbent legislators.

The party, he said, might organize a kangaroo primaries where those already schemed to have the tickets will be selected.

Based on the twin allegations of exploitation and imposition, Madukwe, who contested the same senate seat in 2007 under the platform of APGA, has decided to leave the ruling PDP and pitch tent with PPA.

“I am happy to inform the good people of Abia State that I have resigned my membership of PDP. I have, through my ward chairman of the party, informed the party of this decision.

“I had earlier written to Abia State chairman of PDP notifying him of my intention to withdraw from the race for nomination as their candidate for Abia North senatorial seat for the 2011 general elections.

“I did this on getting the information, backed with incontrovertible proof that the party’s Abia North senatorial ticket for 2011 general election that the slot has already been given to one of us without contest.  We are 15 in number.

“It became clear to me that the rest of us were only being exploited and used to lend credence to a corrupt and undemocratic process.

“It is sad and most regrettable that Abia State branch of this largest political organization in Nigeria, nay, Africa, which most of the badly governed and traumatized people of God’s-own state looked up to for political salvation, is taking the power and its benefits further away from the people.

“It is bad and undemocratic enough that a political party or a branch thereof, gives one or a few of its many aspirants for political offices the undue privilege to hand-pick members of the electoral college that will nominate its candidate from among the aspirants.

“It is far worse and totally intolerable that a political party or a branch thereof will secretly award the price of a political office contest to one of the contestants, even before the contest,” Madukwe said in his letter of resignation.

Lamenting what he called woeful representation by their present Senator, Uche Chukwumerije, Madukwe said  “we have regressed, Abia North is ecologically the worst in the state, no roads and nobody is talking about them.

“Our senator (allegedly) receives N96 million quarterly as constituency development fund, and it is four times a year. I do not know what he does with it.”

He said Abia North zone must be redeemed this time around so that the people will enjoy the dividends of democracy.