Chris had been taking it easy politically after the tumultuous war of nerves with Chris Ngige who was the state governor between 2003 and 2006. But he reappeared earlier in the year when the PDP began the process of choosing its governorship candidate for the Anambra 2010 governorship election. He has been the harshest critic of Professor Charles Soludo’s emergence as the party’s flag bearer in the coming election, most likely because he has a candidate who happens not to be Soludo.
The national leaders of the party had been uncomfortable with his ‘antiparty’ pronouncements and actions, and had been particularly embarrassed by his open campaign against the candidacy of Soludo. They therefore decided to ease him off his leadership of the party at the state level.
For the national leaders, Chris Uba’s latest diatribe was well timed. He had provided a weapon against himself. This is the background: Members of the party’s executive committee in the state are loyal to Chris Uba. But the tenure of the committee was in its last days. In fact, it ended last Wednesday. It was an opportunity for national leaders to move against him. They dismissed his men and appointed a new caretaker committee made up of entirely new set of people, thereby removing the rug from under his feet.
Earlier last week, the Anambra State Disciplinary Committee of the party rose from a meeting to say that it had removed Chris Uba from the party’s membership for what it called Chris Uba’s ‘unruly behaviour’.
“We are tired of the unruly behaviour of Chief Chris Uba. His behaviour has brought shame and disrepute to the party and members are disenchanted with what is happening. Enough is enough,” the State Chairman of the committee John Uche Igwe, announced.
Chris is said to have faulted his expulsion from the PDP. He told a national daily in his usual self-assured manner, “It is the NEC (National Executive Committee) that can expel anyone. I’m in charge of the executive in my state. The said expulsion is laughable.”
Chris lifted himself to national consciousness in 2003 by causing trouble for his namesake Chris Ngige. Ngige had become governor of the state by Chris Uba’s making. Uba had deployed his immense wealth and street-smart tactics to rig Ngige in, but Uba soon became a rampaging godfather. This was when Ngigi refused him the measure of access to the state resources as both allegedly agreed before Ngige went in for the election.
What resulted from the faceoff between Chris and his godson Ngige were near limitless destruction to properties and abduction of Ngige.
On July 10, 2003, a detachment of mobile Policemen led by an Assistant Inspector General of Police, Mr. Rapheal Ige stormed the Governor’s Office, disarmed Ngige’s security aides, and whisked him to a hotel where he was locked up in a room for hours.
Chris who was soon uncovered to have been behind the mayhem was a multi-billionaire government contractor whose elder brother Andy Uba was the Special Assistant to President Olusegun Obasanjo on Domestic Affairs. Obasanjo was the reigning president who surprised many by looking the other way as Chris tormented helpless Ngige. That way, Chris hit infamy.
To the authorities at the time, the abduction of Ngige was a nonissue. It spoke much for Raphael Ige, who led the Police to pick up Ngige as if Ngige was just another lowly individual. Ige’s defence till he suddenly died remained that he acted on orders from above.
Chris is a self-confessed election manipulating expert. His admission of the fact before Obasanjo when he and Ngige went to Aso Rock to see the former president at the peak of the Anambra crisis is well known.
He made a particular confession not so widely reported in far away United States of America (USA). The website www.kwenu.com published an account of a confessional speech which Chris Uba made at a meeting called in September 2004 by Anambra-Enugu States Association in New Jersey over Ngige’s emergence as the Anambra State governor. One Rudolf Okonkwo who did the report quoted Chris as telling the US-based Igbo men and women at the meetig, ““We did not win the election (of 2003). I have gone to church to confess. The election had no document. I called the result before 12 midnight. I gave INEC the money and asked them to call the result.”
According to the report, Chris sought to justify his insistence on having a certain percentage of the monthly federal allocation to himself with the argument that he made investment in Ngige’s political career and should have a payback.
It became widely known that it was Ngige’s refusal to let his benefactor continue to have his regular slice of the state budget that caused the deadly commotion that exploded between them.
Chris Uba who rose to nationwide visibility through the absurdity of abducting incumbent governor Ngigei in 2003 is at it again, this time doggedly determined to see that the Anambra governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Charles Soludo does not go into the Anmabra 2010 governorship election as the candidate.
From his early years as one of the many companions of multi-millionaire godfather of the old Anambra politics, Prince Arthur Eze , Chris Uba has worked himself, albeit controversially, into being that figure you can ignore at your own peril
Many analysts take Chris Uba’s rise to (in)famy from just before the general elections of 2003, but he had achieved prominence in Anambra politics long before Dr. Chinwoke Mbadinuju became governor in 1999. Chris had been in government of Anambra State for years courtesy of the military governments that ruled the state. He only waxed stronger during Mbadinuju’s time.
After the installation of Mbadinuju as governor, Offor who made him governor was believed to have demanded key cabinet positions. Mbadinuju strained their relationship by not honouring the demand. With Offor and Mbadinuju falling out, it was easy for Chris Uba to take the centre stage. His arriving that stage was also helped by a close relationship with the family of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Mbadinuju, according to sources, believed Uba could use the Obasanjo contact to checkmate the offensive launched by Offor. Mbadinuju agreed on certain conditions with Chris Uba, including not tampering with the contract of building the Zik’s Place which Chris had been awarded by a previous government.
But the relationship between Chris and Mbadinuju soon soured, with Chris taking 20 members of the Anambra State House of Assembly to Enugu to hatch a plot to remove the governor. This led to the House breaking into two camps and two speakers. The rumpus settled only after the former speaker of House of Representatives Salisu Buhari led members of the House to broker peace.
Back to Ngige: Uba was handy in using his contact in the Presidency to produce Dr. Chris Ngige as the PDP candidate for the 2003 governorship election. But his romance with Ngige ended soon after as Ngige reneged on their agreement, accusing Uba of seeking too much, of demanding N3 billion as well as asking to be allowed to appoint all the commissioners and top government officials.
A legal battle ensued. First was the judgment of Justice Egbo Egbo which removed Ngige on account of a purported letter of resignation he signed. On this basis, the then AIG Raphael Ige supervised the abduction of Ngige. He was rescued through the intervention of the then Vice President Atiku Abubakar who ordered the IG to direct Ngige’s release.
In the build-up to the 2011 election, so many things are happening in the PDP. Chris is up again looking at how he could possibly install someone as governor. He has since declared his return to power mongering.
He said during one of his first contacts with the media, “I am not cut out to be a governor. I am cut out to be a king maker. For what was happening in the party, I decided to step aside. Now, I am back.”
The nomination of Prof. Chukwuma Soludo as People’s Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate in Anambra received more condemnation Thursday as Chris Uba’s supporters intensified the call for his removal as the PDP flag bearer in the Anambra 2010 governorship election. At the rally organised to drum this home, 23 PDP governorship aspirants who are loyal to Chris Uba condemned the selection of Soludo through a non-primary election.
After the rally, the Police invited Chris for questioning, speculatively in connection with the abduction of Soludo’s 75-year-old father Pa Simeon Soludo who was released on Wednesday after he had been with the suspected kidnappers from eight days earlier.
Chris who has been funding the PDP since 1999 calls Soludo a visitor to the party. “Soludo is a visitor to the state, he is a visitor to the party,” he said while declaring that Soludo could not be the PDP’s governorship candidate in Anambram State.
He vowed, “I told him that Anambra State has gone through many political problems; that people are no longer comfortable with imposition,”
Uba is an enigma for the PDP. It is not clear if his supposed expulsion from the party will turn out to be effective. If it does, he has the option of moving into another party. If he does, he could be more of a problem to the PDP from the outside than he has always been as an insider.
