There’s something compelling about desperate ambition.
Since Emmanuel Nnamdi Uba (better known as Andy Uba)
appears desperate to be my governor, I hereby announce
my readiness to vote for him. Yes, you heard right: I
can’t wait for Mr. Andy Uba to become the governor of
Anambra. My only demand is that the man step forward
to reconcile the discrepancies in his personal record.
For the record, Anambra is home to such intellectual
luminaries as Professor Chinua Achebe, Mr. Emeka
Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Francis Cardinal Arinze, Sir Jerome
Udoji, Mr. Emeka Anyaoku, Dr. Alex Ekwueme, Mrs. Oyibo
Odinamadu, Professor Emmanuel Obiechina, Mr.
Chukwuemeka Ike, Professor Obiora Udechukwu, Mrs. Lily
Ada Ulasi, Mrs. Felicia Ayalogu, Dr. Chu Okongwu,
Professor Helen Chukwuma, Professor Ben Obumselu, Mrs.
Oby Ezekwesili, Dr. Chike Obi, Professor Sam Okoye,
Dr. Dora Akunyili, Dr. A.B.C. Nwosu, and Dr. Charles
Soludo. In its pantheon of deceased juggernauts are
such distinguished people as Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Dr.
Okechukwu Ikejiani, Mr. Mokwugo Okoye, Dr. Kenneth
Onwuka Dike, Dr. Mbanugo, the Menakayas, Mrs. Janet
Mokelu, Mr. Ben Enwonwu, Mr. P.K. Nwokedi, Sir Louis
Mbanefo, Dr. Nwafor Orizu, and Professor J.B.C. Okala.
Even Uba would agree that a state with such
extraordinary moral capital and harvest of enlightened
minds deserves to be led by a man of moral substance
and a measure of intellectual insight. Would Mr. Andy
Uba please stand up to dispel lingering doubts about
his credentials!
A man who seeks the exalted public trust of governor
cannot afford to be a retailer of ruses and lies. And
yet, this is precisely the kind of bind in which Uba
has been trapped since December 2006. For those who
have forgotten, let’s offer a quick rehash.
Last December, The News, one of Nigeria’s top weekly
magazines, carried a cover story titled “Andy Uba: The
Face of a Fraud.” The gist of the report was that Uba,
who has been passing himself off as a doctorate degree
holder, does not even have an earned bachelor degree.
I spoke with one of the magazine’s editors after the
story was published. He confirmed that they gave Uba
several opportunities to substantiate his credentials.
Uba was far from forthcoming. Instead, according to
the editor, Uba was more interested in persuading them
to squelch the investigative story. But since the
editors had independently verified the report’s
factual basis, they went ahead with publication.
It was a devastating report. It began by posing a
pointed question: “Who is Andy Uba, the man
campaigning to be governor of Anambra State?” Then it
followed up with the assertion: “New revelations show
that the favored boy of President Olusegun Obasanjo
has been living a deceptive life, fooling the
President and parading a chain of academic degrees he
does not have.” The story portrayed Uba as a man who
has been “parading titles and credentials he does not
have.”
Something mysterious happened with that edition of the
magazine. On its publication date, not a single vendor
had copies of it to sell. Apparently, somebody had
bought up the magazine’s print run. The goal? To
ensure that readers, especially those in Anambra, did
not read about this poseur of a gubernatorial
candidate. Miffed by their magazine’s disappearance
from newsstands, the editors issued a press release
that accused Uba’s agents. My information was that
they planned to reprint that edition until each of
their regular and occasional readers could get a copy.
But—thanks to veiled threats delivered over the
telephone—the courageous editors were forced to let
matters lie.
I have asked around, but nobody remembers Andy Uba
ever producing proof about the authenticity of his
certificates. Even so, some lazy reporters in Nigeria
have continued to address him in the borrowed prefix
of Dr. A friend of mine who now lives in Houston,
Texas, but who used to work in Abuja, told me that he
was once under the impression that Uba was a medical
doctor. “Whenever I met him, I would call him doc, and
he answered,” this friend said.
I’d like to champion Uba’s desperate quest to
“capture” the governorship of Anambra, but I’d like to
be sure that the man is who he claims to be. Could Uba
then put his traducers and nemeses to shame by naming
the universities he attended, the degrees he earned,
and the dates he earned them? If his curriculum vitae
check out, then Uba would have exposed the base malice
of his league of doubters, this writer included.
In the past, Uba’s apologists had countered that he
doesn’t need a doctorate in order to be a governor.
They pointed to the constitution that spells out a
secondary school certificate as the minimum
educational attainment for any gubernatorial aspirant.
That defence, in Uba’s case, is misconceived. If the
man had presented himself as the holder of the minimum
qualification, he would have been well within his
rights to contest—even though some would then have
asked whether a state as intellectually endowed as
Anambra ought to settle for such a meager talent.
Those who resort to the canard of constitutional
prescription to defend Uba seek to obscure the salient
issue of trust. If a man who wishes to govern a state
is given to false claims and self-inflation, then he
raises disturbing questions about his moral mettle. If
Uba has deceived Nigerians for eight years about the
nature of his academic credentials, then on what
grounds would citizens be asked to repose faith in him
as their leader?
There’s also the vexed question about the source of
Uba’s stupendous wealth. His gubernatorial campaign
was an obscene exercise in the pricing and buying of
people. He distributed cars and cash. He dispensed
motorcycles. He sustained a horde of jobless
hangers-on in hotels. A man desperate for acceptance,
he had little going for him in terms of administrative
experience or salutary political record. The people of
Anambra held him and his former master, Olusegun
Obasanjo, responsible for sponsoring the 2004
widespread torching of public property in the state.
Thugs protected by police officers had combed through
the state in a burn-and-slash campaign. The nefarious
plan was to engender the breakdown of law and order to
give Obasanjo an excuse to declare a state of
emergency. And to impose an administrator who would
willingly herald Uba as governor in 2007.
That perfidy tainted Uba forever in the eyes of the
people of Anambra. Were he a measured fellow, Uba
might have recognized that his ambition to govern a
people he helped batter and ruin would be futile.
Instead, he placed supreme confidence in his seemingly
inexhaustible cash. He spent tons of cash to garner
some semblance of political love. He was the portrait
of determination, a political Sisyphus bent on buying
his way to the Governor’s Lodge in Awka. He also felt,
no doubt, that with Obasanjo as decider-in-chief and
Maurice Iwu set to conduct shameful polls, there was
no stopping his gravy train. His credible opponents
were declared ineligible. Even after several courts
ordered the electoral commission to reverse the
disqualifications, Iwu stuck out his tongue at the
judiciary. Uba had to win, and by all crooked means.
After a farcical exercise that was misnamed elections,
Uba was predictably declared the winner, and by a
predictably huge landslide. Ghosts too must have voted
for this extraordinary man, for Uba’s first vote tally
exceeded the number of registered voters!
In “victory,” Uba proved that there was a perverse
quality to his person and politics. Just as he’s
carried on as a doctor without a proven certificate,
Uba’s “election” produced a bizarre syndrome. Having
“voted” for Uba, the Anambra electorate then slipped
into a collective depression. There was in the state a
palpable sense of mourning, a pall of grief. The cloud
lifted only on June 14 when a seven-member panel of
the Supreme Court, in unanimity, declared Uba an
impostor and ordered his immediate vacation from
office. Throughout Anambra, nay Nigeria, people took
to the streets in a fiesta of laughter and
celebration. All over the country, there was a huge
sigh of relief. An iniquity had been trounced, an
imposition banished.
But it has turned out that we celebrated too soon. Uba
has just found a senior lawyer with the gumption to
ask the Supreme Court to lick its spittle. Uba must
not have witnessed the nation-wide elation that
welcomed the high court’s verdict of June 14. Either
that or Uba believes that his own private cheer is
worth the collective anguish of the people of Anambra
and millions of other Nigerians.
On a weird level, Uba’s desperation is alluring. A man
who seeks this desperately deserves pity or sympathy.
To qualify for sympathy, Uba must explain the source
of the legendary wealth that has bought him many
luxuries, including palatial mansions, a fleet of
cars—and, by some account, a private jet. The Economic
and Financial Crimes Commission ought to be interested
in evidence of what Uba was worth in 1999 when
Obasanjo hired him as a domestic aide. He ought to
explain how he came by that $170,000 dollars that he
illegally ferried into the U.S. on Obasanjo’s
presidential jet. Saminu Turaki, the embattled former
governor of Jigawa, has told the EFCC that he gave Uba
and Obasanjo N10 billion naira for use in the doomed
third term project. Has the EFCC probed Uba’s
connection to the Turaki slush?
Here are two tasks, then, for this irrepressible
seeker. Show us evidence of your educational
achievement. Then establish that you made your money
by legitimate means, not through illicit deals during
the Obasanjo years. If you can’t, then stop affronting
decent men and women with your cash-fueled hubris. If
you want for work, consider rejoining your old master
as a governor of Temperance Farm.
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