Date Published: 08/01/09
Human Rights, Justice and Peace Foundation [HRJPF]
93, Market Road, First Floor, Back,
Aba, Abia State
E-mail: hrjpfoundation@yahoo.com
08035056312
July 31, 2009 PRESS RELEASE
Governor Orji Sells Abia Rubber Estate
The attention of the Human Rights, Justice and Peace Foundation [HRJPF] has been drawn to the criminal sale of Abia Rubber Estate by Governor Theodore Ahamefula Orji to Mrs Eunice Uzor Kalu, the mother of his predecessor.
The estate, which is located at Abam, the home town of the Speaker of the amateur and toothless Abia State House of Assembly, Chief Agwu U. Agwu, was secretly sold to the commercially over-ambitious Kalu’s family without due process of the law, including consulting the landlord owners.
Recall that during the visionary leadership of late Dr. Michael Okpara, the estate was acquired by the Government of the Eastern Region for rubber plantation. Until recently, it was a major source of internally generated revenue to the government of defunct Eastern Region.
But during the Orji Kalu’s administration, the estate was converted to a private property, with proceeds from the sale of rubber lumps, running into billions of naira diverted to private. This, as a result, accounts for the inability of the Abia Rubber Company to pay the salaries of its employees.
It beats our imagination that rather than depart from the accursed ways of his predecessor, Governor Orji whose election manifesto included over 100 count charges of senseless looting of Abia treasury resorted to out-Herod Kalu. Today, Orji has secretly sold the estate to the cabal that brought him to power, to the detriment of the Abam community, owners of the sacred land.
While condemning this senseless acquisition of perishable worldly benefits, the HRJPF calls on the Abam community to resist this criminal sale of their inheritance by a gang of robbers in political garbs led by Governor Orji.
Comrade Chidi Nwosu
President
