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| Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, representing Abia North. File photograph. |
Senator Orji Uzor Kalu says he previously traded in heavy weapons internationally, supplying buyers according to their ability to pay before leaving the business at his parents’ insistence.
Kalu, who represents Abia North in the Senate, discussed the business during an interview on Arise Television on Monday, 9 November. The conversation also covered his relationships with successive South African political leaders.
Responding to a direct question about whether he had been an arms dealer, the former Abia State governor replied, “Yes, so I stopped because my…”
He then attributed his departure from the trade to his parents’ intervention.
“But my parents, my mother, my father came and said I must stop, and I stopped.”
During the exchange, the interviewer raised Nigeria’s problems with the circulation of small arms. Kalu said his business had involved heavy weapons traded between countries.
“No, no, these are heavy arms that were sold country to country,” he said.
He declined to identify his suppliers when asked where he obtained the weapons, saying, “It's only my business.”
The interviewer also questioned whether he considered the possibility that buyers would use the weapons to kill people. Kalu said his concern at the time was the income from the transactions.
“No, no, no, no, no, no. I was selling guns to make money, whether they blow up it's not my business,” he said.
Asked whether he had supplied the African National Congress during its struggle against apartheid, Kalu said he had not restricted his business to one organisation. He mentioned the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Namibia while explaining his willingness to sell to paying customers.
“No, I was selling to anybody who wants to buy. If you have the money, you want to buy in D.R.C, I sell to you, you want to buy in Namibia, you want to buy…” he said.
Questions about Libya’s former leader, Muammar Gaddafi, drew a similarly broad response.
“To anybody that had money to buy,” Kalu replied.
When the interviewer suggested that his answer implied he had supplied Gaddafi, the senator said: “May his soul rest in peace. He was a good man. If you have money to buy, when I was selling, I would sell to you.”
His answer did not identify a particular transaction with the former Libyan leader. Pulse’s account of the interview likewise noted that he had not explicitly confirmed a sale to Gaddafi.
Kalu traced his connections with South African leaders to his friendship with Nelson Mandela. He said Mandela introduced him to former president Thabo Mbeki and current president Cyril Ramaphosa.
He also recalled a conversation in which, according to his account, Mandela compared the contributions of Mbeki’s and Ramaphosa’s fathers to the anti-apartheid struggle. Kalu said Mandela cited those contributions when explaining his preference for Mbeki.
Mbeki served as executive deputy president under Mandela from 1994 to 1999, according to South Africa’s official government record.
Kalu said Mbeki subsequently introduced him to former president Jacob Zuma, extending his personal contacts through successive South African administrations.