•Ngige
Senator Chris Ngige, was Governor of Anambra State and later, the Minister of Labour and Employment in President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. He is a trained medical doctor and rose through ranks in the civil service to the directorate level before his foray into politics.
In this interview, he speaks on how he was taken to Okija shrine to swear an oath of loyalty before he became a governor.
He also speaks on his illegal abduction as a sitting governor, his efforts to ensure that Buhari released the Indigenous People of Biafra leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, among other issues, reports Saturday Vanguard.
Excerpts:
When people talk about Okija shrine, they always mention your name, why is it so, what is your involvement with Okija shrine?
I was taken to Okija shrine by force. By midnight, I didn’t know where we were going, and it was a few days to my election. So they said we must go there to swear an oath of loyalty. Of course, I know that those shrines and those small deities don’t work. God Almighty is above all of them. So I went with my Bible and holy water. When we got there and I looked at what they were doing, one of them now opted to go and swear for me.
I said, fine and he did. But when I became governor and the security report showed what they were doing there, swindling people, I don’t know how it happened, but the then president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo gave an instruction to my Commissioner of Police, CP, through the Inspector General of Police, IGP, that the place should be dismantled. The CP called me and we went and levelled the place.
So, that particular shrine is no longer there. But there are so many little shrines in Okija. It’s now that people have forsaken those things, having noted that it was being operated by a swindling gang.
When you were abducted, who were the people that came to your rescue, and how were you rescued?
I have said so many things about my illegal abduction, and there were many people who rescued me or came to my aid. The first person was my driver from my hometown who was driving my private vehicle when they seized my official car. I went with my private 406 car.
By some intuition, I told my private driver to come with us in the convoy. So, on that day, when they had seized the other car, rolled up the flag and closed the crest, I entered my private car and detailed one DSP, the one who was standing on the door with an AK47 to also accompany me in that car.
He was inside the car, and we were on our way to Alor, my hometown. He said they had instructions to take me to my village. So, when I came to a place called quarter, I spoke to my driver in Igbo, because, fortunately, that man wasn’t Igbo, and he detoured to my hotel. When we got to the hotel, he said this is not part of the instruction, and I said, yes, but if you’re taking me to my village, I have to get my luggage and my clothes and they’re here. So after a long argument, they allowed me.
I came down and when I got to the area where you have a staircase to go up to my room on the third floor, one of them decided to follow me and I said no, it’s my PA that should follow me. But they said no, that I should be with two of them now instead of even one person. I smelt a rat and I said I was not going anywhere anymore. So I carried one plastic chair, put it in the courtyard and sat down there. So they started radioing their Assistant Inspector General, AIG, that the man was in the hotel and had refused to go to any other place. So, he blamed them for even detouring and sent some senior officers. By that time, my elder sister had arrived, my Chief Press Secretary, the media man, Fred Chukwulobe had also arrived.
So they came to the iron barricade and spoke to me about whether they should put it on the Anambra radio about what was happening and I said yes. So they went and blasted it on the radio there that I was still alive. Then one traditional ruler, Igwe Anugwu, who was my friend in the Alex Ekwueme Campaign Organisation ALEKCO, and was our treasurer but belonged to APGA (All Progressive Grand Alliance), saw me there and passed me two times and on the third time he saw that there was trouble, when he saw policemen encircling the entire courtyard.
He spoke to me from the burglary proof that was used in fencing round the courtyard and I said, yes, that these people said I was no longer governor and that they had seized my office, seized my car and I was here. Before I went into that courtyard, we had a fistfight because one of the policemen pushed me and I gave him a heavy knock. I told him I was a black belt holder, that I would kill him if he made any attempt again, so he ran away.
So, I went to the courtyard and they didn’t come to attack me physically again because they saw what happened to the other one because I hit him very hard and when I hit him, he knocked his head on the wall and he ran away. He dropped his gun and ran away and the other people now rescued him, so they left me. The traditional ruler then said he would call Dr. Alex Ekwueme to tell him.
He called Ekwueme, and I spoke with Ekwueme. He said, ‘Igbo leader,’ which is what he calls me. ‘What’s happening?’ They said some policemen arrested you, I said yes. He said, arrest a governor with immunity?
I said, well, they said I was no longer the governor. He said okay, so the man came back and asked if there was any other person I wanted to speak with. I said yes, I would like to speak to someone in my party. So I gave him the number of a land line which he dialed.
The land phone belonged to Prince Vincent Ogbulafor’s office, but then Vincent was the secretary. We had worked from that office when Nwodo was the secretary, because I was the assistant national secretary. The number was in my head. So, the person who picked up the phone was Vin Ogbulafor himself, and he said, hello, who is that? I said, it’s me. He said, you are who? I said Dr. Ngige. Of course, he didn’t believe me that it was Ngige. He said look, my friend stop playing here, we are not playing, we are looking for our governor, our party’s governor, we are looking for him and you are presenting yourself as him. I said no, it’s Ngige. I then called him Vinoo because that’s the pet name I call him, Vinoo, prince of the Niger. He said, eweeh, he spoke in Igbo and said ‘owu gi’ (is it you?).
So, that was what happened and from him the phone was passed to Dikibbo who spoke to me and said, are you still alive? I said yes. Then the phone was passed to another NWC (National Working Committee) member, Bode George. I spoke with everybody there. Then, Eddie Iroh, the Director-General of FRSC (Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria) was in the waiting room of Ogbulafor, and when they said, it was me on the line, he ran out and brought his crew and connected us on the 4pm news where he spoke with me asking me questions and I answered that I was alive. He said, where are you? I said I was in Choice Hotel, Awka, that was where I was being held.
So, Nigerians heaved a sigh of relief. And from there the Vice President spoke with me through the same phone and he told me, if you didn’t resign, there’s no need for anybody to force you to resign. Resignation is by choice, not compulsory, it’s voluntary.
So after thirty minutes, the IGP called me and said he was sending people to come and take me back to my office and I said okay, fine. Of course, when they came, it was about half past six. It was getting a little bit dark already, so I told him I was not going to my office again. They said, no, that their instruction was to take me to the office. I said, no, I don’t want to go to my office, so they left me.
They knew I had a brawl with one of their men, and I had an earlier brawl inside the office with the AIG, when I was trying to pack my bag to come out. He said I should leave everything, but I said, no, so we struggled for the bag inside my office and I came out. So that was how Nigerians knew I was alive, and the rest is now history.
You once mentioned that you had faced many disciplinary committees when you were in the civil service, how many did you face and what were your alleged offences then?
(Laughs). No, I didn’t face many, this one was the major one. This other one was because they said I was breaking the civil service rules which they claimed made my Ideal Clinic in 1004 (Lagos) exclusive to civil servants, not even public servants. You know, if you’re working in a corporation or an organisation that is not a ministry, then you are a public servant.
So I flouted all the rules because public servants were living there with their families, and they also said we shouldn’t attend to pediatric cases there. I said, no, because if a mother is disturbed because the child is sick, she would not go to work.
So, if your child is not well, and you are a civil servant, what it means is that you would take your child to go and look for a doctor elsewhere, and then you won’t go to work. But if you walk into our clinic in 1004, we would treat your child and then tell you to observe him or her, and if the illness continues, you come back and we would give you a referral to Mercy’s Children’s Hospital. So that was why I faced the committee, and of course, I defeated my traducers.
You were close to Buhari, how did you receive the news of his death?
Buhari did not die at the time that I thought he would die. That is what is giving me sadness and sorrow. We expected this bad news in 2016-2017 when he went for that long treatment, came back and went back again. In fact, when he came back, he said he had never been sick like that in his life.
So as a physician, I looked at everything then and I knew he had a narrow escape. But this time, before he left for that treatment, I spoke with him and when he was in the UK. To the best of my knowledge, he didn’t even go to the UK because he was sick. He was going for his checkup. So I received the news with a lot of sadness. But like I told you, I’m a stoic philosopher and believer. That was his time.
He has played his own part. And God now wills him to come back. And that’s what he has done without notice to a lot of people. I used to talk to him, maybe once in a fortnight, I would speak to protocol. Even when he came to Kaduna. So, I was looking forward to seeing him in Kaduna, because I was abroad when he moved to Kaduna. I was away from Nigeria for up to three months. So the news was like a jolt from the blues for me.
But again, that’s God’s will. And we have to wish him well because he was one man who also wished Nigerians well, especially those that were down-trodden. We don’t have to expose everything to the media, but I know the fight that went on throughout his eight years on the issue of devaluation of the Naira. He was opposed to it, he fought it with all his strength, he didn’t want to hear about devaluation.
What will you tell people who believed Buhari disappointed you in the sense that you were among the prominent Igbo sons who went to him to plead for the release of Nnamdi Kanu?
Yes, I was disappointed and I told him because in 2022, I organised for him to meet with Igbo leaders. The late Chief Mbazulike Amaechi, led a delegation comprising the late Chukwuemeka Ezeife, Bishop Onuoha, myself, Chief Uwazurike, and Chief Ogbonnaya Onu had to join us as Minister from the South East.
