Nwankwo Joseph [KSC]
Since the return of democracy in 1999 violence, corruption, and “godfatherism” have been the bane of the politics of Anambra State.
Anambra’s citizens have remained without a meaningful voice in the selection of their political leaders until the 2003 elections that saw an established banker and businessman Mr Peter Obi gun for the governorship of the state.
Prior to this period a few individuals had always sat and decided who got what whether the person was qualified or not or whether the person was prepared for the position or not. Thus Anambra State has had reluctant leaders who are either not qualified for office or ill prepared for the office to which they are dragged into.
Anambra State, one of the states in Nigeria, has had a vibrant, rough and rugged political climate in Nigeria. The State has not only produced renowned literary figures, diplomats, business men and women, captains of industry and sports personalities of repute, it has also spawned great leaders that played major roles in the shaping of Nigeria. But there is one family which has risen from relative obscurity to being among top decision makers in the leadership of the state – the Uba family from Uga in Aguata Local Government Area.
This family has, within a space of 15 years, loomed large in the political atmosphere of the state and has produced one governor and two senators, with the last of the brothers trying albeit unsuccessfully to get into the red chambers thus making them the first family to have produced three senators in the country. Not only have the two senators, at separate times, represented their constituency (Anambra South) in the Senate, they have been credited with being among the ‘godfathers’ that installed a former governor in the state along with all state and federal lawmakers in the state.
Dr. Ugochukwu Uba, the eldest of the three Uba brothers, is a physician, who was practising in Jos, the Plateau State capital before he ventured into politics under the failed Abacha transition programme. He later became a PDP senator from 2003- 2007.
Senator Nnanmdi (Andy) Uba was resident in the United States before being recalled to serve as former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s Senior Special Assistant on Special Duties and Domestic Affairs. He later contested in the governorship elections in 2007 on the platform of PDP and won. He was sworn in as governor but holds the record of being the shortest serving governor in the history of the state and country. He was in office for 17 days before being sacked by the Supreme Court, which declared that impeached Governor Peter Obi of the All Progressives Grand Alliance had not completed his term.
The youngest of the Uba brothers, Chris, is a business man and chieftain of the PDP. He is the self-acclaimed godfather of Anambrra politics. Though he has never held any political office, he has presided over an arrangement that produced a governor, all National Assembly seats in the Senate and House of Representatives as well as all members of the state house of assembly in 2003. He won the ticket to run for the Senate in 2019. If he had succeeded at the polls, then all the Uba brothers would have held the Senate seat for Anambra South.
Unlike the Bush and Kennedy families in the United States that have become famous and built a political dynasty on principle and integrity, the Uba family would be described as having built their political relevance on controversies, opportunism and playing hard ball. These assumed characteristics are not meted out to just their opponents but to themselves.
Andy took over the senatorial ticket from his elder brother, Ugochukwu, after the latter was defeated by Senator Ikechukwu Obiorah in 2007. The dream of Andy for a third shot at the Senate was challenged by Chris who said he would want his brother to support his ambition but their dreams of going to the red chambers was thwarted by Senator Ifeanyi Ubah. Of the three brothers, analysts credit Andy as being the person on whose platform the Uba family’s dominance in Anambra politics was built.
On assuming office as the President in 1999, former President Olusegun Obasanjo recalled Andy who was resident in the United States to become his aide. His appointment was so powerful that he was described as the President’s right-hand man, and also the gatekeeper for people who wished to talk to the President. He was the last person Obasanjo usually saw before going to bed and the first he met when he awoke. So many insinuations and allegations were made concerning Andy’s closeness to the former president.
Ugochukwu was touted to be Obasanjo’s choice for Senate President but being a new member of the upper legislative house, he was caught by the Senate resolution that new members would not be allowed to stand for election into its principal offices. He, however, got compensated with the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Power and Steel.
Andy said that there was nothing special about the Uba family other than their being normal Nigerians according to him “as for me, or together with my brothers, we are just normal Nigerians who are struggling to actualise ourselves like any other Nigerian…. Knowing the President or someone working in the presidency is normal because it is human beings that are working there. So there is nothing peculiar about the Ubas,”.
While the elder Uba brothers held sway in different arms of government, the younger Uba, Chris, showed his political muscle in 2003 when he singlehandedly installed the government in Anambra State, from the governor to the members of the state assembly.
But no sooner had his political god son, Governor Chris Ngige, assumed office, than the two fell apart in an episode that can be best described as Anambra’s day of infamy. The July 10, 2003 broad daylight kidnapping of the governor and the Hollywood style announcement of his resignation brought to light the extent godfatherism had eaten into the Anambra polity.
The disagreement between Chris Uba and his estranged godson, Ngige, exposed the secret and illegal dealings the people that had taken over governance in the state were involved in. Ngige, after being rescued from a hotel he was held captive, reportedly identified Chris as the mastermind of his kidnapping for his failure to ‘sign away’ state government fund as secretly agreed.
The spate of destructions and violence that followed the fall out of the row between the politicians was among the reasons given by late Prof. Chinua Achebe for rejecting a national honour awarded him by the Obasanjo administration in 2004. Achebe in an emotion-laden letter described Uba and his gang as a clique of renegades determined to turn the state into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom.
The table turned against Chris when his brother Andy, embarrassed by the brazen display of arrogance by his younger brother, sidelined him from government and disrupted his control of the PDP machinery in the state. Chris did not work for his brother during the 2007 election and even after Andy was removed as governor by the Supreme Court in 2007, he was also not part of his 2010 bid for governorship.
But in 2011, both brothers reconciled at the instance of their mother and Andy got voted into the Senate. In November 2013, during the governorship election in Anambra State, both brothers united and worked together to realise Andy”s governorship ambition on the platform of PDP which he failed to clinch the party”s ticket. As instead of participating in the governorship primaries held by the party state chairman, Chief Ken Emeakanyi, he went ahead to conduct parallel primaries under the chairmanship of Ejike Oguebeogu.
Andy ended up not being on the ballot on Election Day on November 16, 2013; instead the governorship flag bearer of the PDP was Comrade Tony Nwoye, who was one of Andy’s boys. The rest they say is history.
That reunion of the brothers cracked with Chris picking up the ticket for the Senate to occupy the seat that was occupied by Andy in the Senate.
Chris is claiming that most politicians detach themselves from the masses after elections, thereby subjecting them to untold hardship, a situation he said he would correct. He dismissed insinuations that he is at loggerheads with his brother, saying: “It’s not true that I’m at war with my brother Andy, over this bid. But this is politics; everybody has his interests and objectives to accomplish in life. I think I have helped so many people to actualise their ambitions and be great, so that they could help others, but I think most people are selfish and greedy.
This was the first time that two brothers tested their strength and popularity in the polls, an exercise that they lost to the incumbent who garnered 87,081 to Chris’s 52,462 votes while Andy scored a paltry 13,245 votes.
However inspite of the clear margin with which Ifeanyi Ubah defeated the brothers they have remained adamant even after losing at the National Assembly Elections Petitions Tribunal.
In the judgment delivered on September 9th 2019 the tribunal was unanimous in holding that Uba brothers have failed woefully to discharge the burden on them to prove the allegations of corruption and electoral malpractices as according to the tribunal “no credible witness was called by the duo to prove their case.