Categories: Politics

Chief Arthur Nzeribe, an enigma (1938-2022): How he will be remembered

Chief Arthur Nzeribe, a multi millionaire, was born in Oguta, Imo State, on November 2, 1938. He held the title of Ogbuagu, among others chieftaincy titles. Ogbuagu is regarded as the highest traditional chieftaincy title in Oguta.

It is not for nothing that Nzeribe was called a maverick politician.
In 1983, he was said to have spent a whooping N12m to win a senatorial seat in Orlu on the platform of the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP). That amount was the annual budget of many states put together then.
Ten years after, he became a prominent sponsor of the infamous Association for a Better Nigeria (ABN), which backed the General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) military administration.
It was the ABN that campaigned and convinced IBB to annul the June 12, 1993 presidential election, adjudged to be the fairest, freest and most transparent in the history of Nigeria, which was said to have been won by the late MKO Abiola.
Nzeibe was also referred to as the original evil genius in some quarters.
He got a scholarship from the Nigerian Ports Authority in 1958 to study Marine Engineering in England.

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By 1960, he sold life insurance to black immigrants in Britain. At a point, he was said to have met Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana that year and started working for him in the area of public relations. He bought his first Rolls Royce car a year later.
In 1969, Nzeribe started the Fanz Organisation based in London, an organisation that dealt in heavy construction, arms, oil brokerage, publishing and property investment. It also engaged in business in the Middle East and the Gulf region. By 1979, Fanz had an annual trading turnover of £70 million.
In Nigeria, Nzeribe built Sentinel Assurance and other companies. His country home in Oguta is called Haven of Peace, a plush estate that has multiple mansions that still compete with anything you can get anywhere in the country.
The billionaire businessman was elected into the Senate in the Third Republic. He represented the Orlu senatorial zone in 1999 and was re-elected in 2003.
However, the tide turned against him in November 2002 when the then president of the Senate, Anyim Pius Anyim, suspended him indefinitely following an allegation of a N22m fraud. Nzeribe was said to be planning an impeachment motion against Anyim at the time.
Arthur Nzeribe’s power and influence further declined in April 2006, when the Orlu People’s Consultative Assembly, sponsored by the then Governor of Imo State, Chief Achike Udenwa, staged a “one-million-man march” to mobilise support for Nzeribe’s recall from the Senate.
In December 2006, Osita Izunaso defeated him during the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) primary election. However, in August 2007, Nzeribe was appointed a member of the Board of Trustees of the PDP.
Since his defeat by Izunaso, with the assistance of Udenwa, Nzeribe disappeared from the public scene. That was before he became sick, a situation attributed to old age and a domestic accident he had in his country.

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