Thursday, July 10, 2003: The abduction of Governor Chris Nwabueze Ngige of Anambra State shook Nigeria up.
It was unheard of, unprecedented, that a state governor could be kidnapped from his office by gun-toting non-state actors.
It was this first-in-Nigerian-history action that was staged in Anambra State and broadcast live on national radio.
The tormentors of Governor Ngige, led by his self-proclaimed godfather, Chief Chris Uba, sent a forged letter to the Anambra State House of Assembly purporting that the governor had resigned from office.
The Assembly was quite fast in endorsing the forged resignation letter, and asked the State Chief Judge to swear in the Deputy Governor as Ngige’s replacement.
In fast and giddy moments, a police honcho, AIG Raphael Ige, reeking of tombo-liquor, took some policemen in his charge to hold Ngige captive in his office after disarming his security details.
Governor Ngige was forced into a vehicle and was being taken to his hometown of Alor before he spoke in Igbo to his driver to drive instead to Choice Hotel in Awka.
The kidnappers of Ngige held him captive in the open frontage of the capacious hotel to the shock and fear of all.
It’s necessary now to flesh up this matter with the backstory to give it a measure of context.
At the return of civil rule in Nigeria in 1999, President Olusegun Obasanjo was in power and Anambra State was always on the front pages – for all the wrong reasons.
But as the Irish wag Oscar Wilde knows, “the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about”.
In the halcyon days of his regime, Obasanjo touted Christianity and Pharisaical prayers, and he had a sedulous apostle in Anambra State Governor, Dr Chinwoke Mbadinuju, who took his hebdomadal prayers to the heart of Onitsha Main Market.
When Anambra people opened their eyes after the hectic prayer sessions, schools were shut, workers remained unpaid, pensioners like my father and mother were dismissed as “deadwoods”.
Ask the Pentecostal miracle contractors about the rewards of “dangerous prayers”!
Mbadinuju was jilted by his PDP party in the 2003 gubernatorial contest, and Ngige was chosen to win a rigged poll.
Swashbuckling godfather Chris Uba, according to my strategic sources, told Mbadinuju’s godfather, Emeka Ofor, that he would be eaten up “like Crackers biscuits”.
Foreshadowing the shape of things to come, Uba told all who cared to listen that the keys to Anambra State had been handed over to him by the powers-that-be, and that his word was law.
He appointed all the commissioners and principal officers of Governor Ngige, after having reportedly taken the governor to the dreaded Okija shrine to take an oath.
It’s against this background that the Thursday, July 10, 2003 abduction happened before the very eyes of an astonished world.
There was talk of a traditional ruler with a gun giving Governor Ngige his phone to talk to Vice-President Atiku Abubakar.
There were other talks and reports, but it’s not in my constitution to dwell on controversies and claims.
It just suffices to stress that when Ngige told Atiku that he had not really resigned, the vice-president instructed IGP Tafa Balogun to promptly restore the constitutional order in Anambra State.
Justice Egbo-Egbo who gave the ruling that Ngige actually resigned had to quit the judiciary in disgrace, even as the ill-fated AIG Ige who led the abduction team died mysteriously.
Judge Stanley Nnaji of Enugu High Court, claiming he had powers to oust a sitting governor from another state, gave the order ousting Ngige whereupon Obasanjo’s federal regime promptly withdrew Governor Ngige’s security details.
Anambra Government House was denied of police guard for months on end.
People’s power kept Ngige in office as thousands of Anambra men, women and children kept vigil at the Government House.
At about 4 AM on November 10, 2004 I got a call from a major Anambra stakeholder that some hoodlums brought into the state in 40-odd buses had burnt every building of government business and the broadcasting houses while the police stood idly by, obeying “orders from above”.
The mayhem lasted all of three days with the law enforcement agents of Nigeria in officious support.
I was moved to write the article “A President Smaller than Anambra State”.
Eniola Bello of THISDAY newspaper posed this ominous question in his column of Sunday, November 14, 2004: “Could Obasanjo have been taken to the Okija shrine before the 2003 presidential election?”
Due to Chris Uba’s unfathomable influence on Obasanjo, the Nigerian Tribune coined the unflattering acronym: President UBASANJO!
Obasanjo received a direct slap in the face when the oracular Chinua Achebe turned down his offer of the national award, CFR, and forwarded a stinker to the imperial president: “I write this letter with a very heavy heart. For some time now, I have watched events in Nigeria with alarm and dismay. I have watched particularly the chaos in my own state of Anambra where a small clique of renegades, openly boasting its connection in high places, seems determined to turn my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom. I am appalled by the brazenness of this clique and the silence, if not connivance, of the Presidency… Nigeria under your watch is too dangerous for silence.”
The PDP chairman, Audu Ogbeh, was pained, fearing that the regime may collapse over the Anambra matter like the NPN in the 2nd Republic, and he courageously wrote to Obasanjo: “I call on you to act now and bring any and all the criminals, even treasonable activity, to a halt. You and you alone have the means.”
Audu Ogbeh lost his job for his effrontery in the court of the emperor.
President Obasanjo wrote a public letter to press home the fact that Chris Uba once led Chris Ngige to Aso Villa to confess that Ngige was rigged into office without knowing how it was done!
Chris Uba who had no immunity was not arrested.
When the influential magazine FARAFINA asked me to write a signed editorial on the Anambra matter, I wrote: “We insist that Chris Uba and his cohorts should be immediately arrested and made to face the law. Since Peter Obi, the obvious winner of the election, is still alive, he should be given back his stolen mandate. We would be toying with the destiny of this potentially great nation when we wantonly let people who abuse the constitution to get away with it.”
By fighting Ngige so furiously without success, Obasanjo created paradoxically the most popular politician of his era.
When Ngige showed up at Obasanjo’s wife Stella’s funeral in Ogun State, the crowd could not be controlled in their excitement while hailing the diminutive man. A voice with Northern accent was heard over the hubbub saying: “Haba, this man na touch and die!”
Having failed in his bid to find reasons to declare a state of emergency, Obasanjo had to reluctantly bow to the wishes of Anambra people and the rule of law by letting Ngige be removed by the election tribunal, thus paving the way for the coming to power of the man who the people originally voted for: Peter Obi.
Even so, the war on Anambra continued with Governor Obi being unconstitutionally impeached in an unholy hour by a handful of legislators holed up in the hotel room of a neighbouring state.
Governor Obi’s deputy, Dame Virgy Etiaba, was sworn in as governor, and had to be led to Aso Villa to pledge her loyalty to Obasanjo by his factotum Andy Uba whom he had promised to hand over the state for his dutiful service!
As ever, Peter Obi went back to court to win back his mandate.
In the 2007 gubernatorial election in Anambra, Obi was excluded from the ballot by INEC on “orders from above”.
Andy Uba, who had supplanted his hapless brother Chris as the grand “godfather” of Anambra State politics, was declared the winner of the election with a number greater than the list of registered voters in the state!
The number had to be edited after the announcement of the result.
Peter Obi was back at the Supreme Court, asking for the determination of his actual tenure.
Poor Andy Uba, he served only 16 days as “governor” before the Supreme Court in a landmark ruling sent him packing, thus paving the way for staggered elections in Nigeria.
As his mentor Obasanjo was no longer in power, Andy Uba had to quickly flee from Government House, Awka.
By overthrowing the yoke of federal power without firing a shot, Anambra taught the entire country a sophisticated lesson in the rule of law which the succeeding President Yar’Adua made his own mantra.
The sublime demystification of Chris and Andy Uba, together with their godfather in Aso Rock, by the people of Anambra State was a complete thesis in political sophistication.
If it’s possible in Anambra State, it can be possible in Nigeria.
