When the governor of Anambra speaks

What is it about the governance of Anambra State that is transforming men in some way? Over the past 22 years, this state of high education and wealth has produced what appears to be Nigeria's most fascinating governor's chair.

To see a certain Chris Ngige now directing an entire federal ministry as a kind of pantomime, we might forget that it was he who, in 2003, succeeded as governor to the completely regrettable Chinwoke Mbadinuju.< /p>

But Ngige was quickly exposed by Chris Uba, the very man responsible for one of the earliest and clearest cases of People's Democratic Party rigging in the Fourth Republic.

Uba was a close friend of then President Olusegun Obasanjo, so Anambra was seen as a "good" trick for a political party that openly declared that it would control Nigeria for 60 or 100 year. The man Uba faked for Ngige? His name was Peter Obi.

In 2007, as Obasanjo went to the political morgue, he chose Andy Uba, another close friend of his and brother of Chris Uba, to run for governor. If you're old enough, you'll remember that Obasanjo campaigned for Andy, his former servant, perhaps his most powerful ad being this: "He wakes me up and watches me till I sleep. "

Anambra did not recover from these initial stumbles. Current Governor Charles Soludo first arrived on the gubernatorial scene in 2009, having joined the ranks of not only the state's highly educated people, but also its wealthy after his stint as as Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. He had no democratic pretensions: the PDP chose him as their candidate.

But as we all know, it was all futile for him. Soludo lost to the same Peter Obi, who in the meantime had maintained the Anambra gubernatorial carousel by reclaiming his warrants through the court.

If you're an election loser and have to wait four years for another chance at your coveted position, it must be a long and tortuous one. I imagine they were indeed for the former CBN Governor, and the eight years that followed could have been even longer since he was disqualified from the gubernatorial race in his new party, the All Progressives Grand Alliance, in 2013.

Willie Obiano was the winner, paving the way for Soludo in 2021. He is remembered for two embarrassing incidents on his last day in office: his wife was publicly slapped by Bianca Ojukwu during of Soludo's inauguration, as he was arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission as he attempted to flee the country for the United States.

Anambra's colorful governorship returned to the limelight last week after Soludo rejected presidential chances for the man who beat him for the top seat he 12 years ago. The initial claims having been made on television, he returned in a wordy statement to explain his position, a position that annoyed a wide range of people.

My position is that in the spirit of democracy, Soludo should be allowed to speak. He has already started, however, to write "History calls me and I will not be silent (Part 1)".

Let Soludo speak, as he seems ready to do. But he must speak whole, not in part and not in tongues, as the elect of the past and the present.

I am writing this article not because of the size of Peter Obi but because the arena in which Soludo returned - the national one - has not changed compared to the one in which he served as Governor of CBN and about which few questions are outstanding. Several of my articles on this subject are available online.

In "History Beckons", Soludo lays down a compelling platform: "…as a Christian, I know that telling the truth can be very costly, even suicidal. Our Lord and Savior was crucified just for telling the truth that people didn't want to hear. I promised that I wouldn't be the usual politician and that I wouldn't knowingly lie to the people. I'm not an angel but rather than knowingly repeating the same deceitful figure that politicians are known for, I would leave public service. It's a wish I made to my God and my family…”

In practice, then, let's see how deep this vow of holiness is. First: The United States fined the Nigerian bank United Bank for Africa in New York in April 2008 $15 million for violating the Bank Secrecy Act, following the activities of the African financial company that Soludo had created, having illegally appointed himself president of, and managed in an international scandal.