Immunity Protection. Charles Soludo handpicked as PDP governorship candidate in contentious move .

The People's Democratic Party (PDP) has picked controversial former Central Bank governor, Charles Soludo, as the party's candidate in upcoming Anambra state gubernatorial elections scheduled for February 6, 2010. 

Our sources said the choice of Soludo materialized after much behind-the-scenes intrigues and maneuvers carried out by PDP operatives with ties to Umaru Yar’adua and his wife, Turai Yar'adua.

The PDP congress was moved to Abuja in what a PDP official told Saharareporters was “a strategic move to avoid the impact of a court injunction granted against the party by an Anambra State high court.” Then the congress was moved from the party’s secretariat in Abuja to the Shehu Yar'adua Center when word reached Turai Yar'adua that some PDP party officials had received large sums of money from Chris Uba to make his brother-in-law the candidate of the party.

Uche Ekwunife

The PDP’s attempt to hold primaries to determine the party’s candidate was marred by widespread shooting and other forms of violence perpetrated by thugs hired by different candidates or their sponsors. Abuja-based attorney, Kayode Ajulo, an eyewitness at today’s meeting to choose a “consensus candidate” said party members “conducted themselves in an unruly manner at the Yar’adua Center.” The witness said, “the members of the self-styled largest party in Africa behaved worse than gangsters. They broke anything breakable, even shoved and assaulted three police officers.” 

Saharareporters had earlier reported that Charles Soludo had enlisted Mrs. Yar’adua’s help to secure the governorship in order to buy himself immunity from prosecution in a myriad of fraud cases dogging him. The latest controversy around the former CBN governor has to do with a bribery case involving Securency, an Australian currency manufacturer.

Soludo reportedly demanded and received bribes from the firm before steering contracts to the company to mass-produce polymer currency. A source familiar with the case also told Saharareporters that Mrs. Yar'adua was implicated in the bribe-for-polymer scandal.

But while Soludo’s candidacy excites Mrs. Yar'adua, a source in Abuja told us that a political shocker might await Turai. The source of the shocker is in the candidacy of Mrs. Uche Ekwunife, a member of the House of Representatives who trounced Mr. Emeka Etiaba in the primaries yesterday to become the candidate of PPA. Our sources said Mrs. Ekwunife might be the joker from the Chris Uba camp.

Said the source: “Since Chris Uba has failed to put in his brother-in-law, his group may work for the victory of Mrs. Ekwunife – who will then return to the fold of the ruling party the same way Imo State governor, Ikedi Ohakim, was brought into office under another party and then decamped to the PDP as soon as he stabilized.”

Uche Ekwunife, a former youth corps member in 2000, notoriously dated former Governor Chinwoke Mbadinuju of Anambra. She made an incredible fortune as a front for the former governor. She was found to be in possession of N2 billion in her private account, and later resigned from Standard Trust Bank to join politics, with all her loot intact.