Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, who represents Abia North Senatorial District, has admitted in a television interview that he once ran a thriving arms business abroad. The former Abia State governor said he sold weapons to “anybody who wants to buy,” and he quit only after his parents told him to stop. However, he refused to say where he got the guns.
Kalu made the admission while describing his friendships with African leaders. He said he met the late South African president Nelson Mandela long ago and kept that friendship alive. According to him, Mandela introduced him to the presidents who followed. “My major business used to be outside this country to deal on arms,” he said.
The host pressed him immediately. “You were an arms dealer?” the interviewer asked. “Yes,” Kalu replied. Then he explained why he left the trade. “My mother, my father came and said, I must stop. And I stopped,” he said. The host answered that he was glad.
Next, the host challenged him on the consequences of the trade. “So you were selling guns to people to blow other people to bits?” he asked. Kalu rejected that framing. “I was selling guns to make money,” he said, adding that what buyers did with the weapons was not his concern. In addition, he denied selling exclusively to any group. When the host asked whether the African National Congress was among his customers, Kalu said no. “I was selling to anybody who wants to buy,” he said.
He then named some possible buyers. “If you have the money, you want to buy in DRC, I say to you, you want to buy in Namibia,” Kalu said. The host asked whether he sold to Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. “To anybody that had money to buy it,” Kalu answered. He also called Gaddafi “a good man.”
The host then asked where the guns came from. Kalu declined to answer. “It’s only my business. It’s only me knows where I got them,” he said. Furthermore, the host raised Nigeria’s small arms problem and asked whether Kalu had sold weapons inside the country. Kalu insisted he did not deal in that type of weapon. He said the arms he handled moved from country to country.
The remarks echo earlier accounts of Kalu’s career. Several profiles say he built his early fortune by winning a contract to supply arms and ammunition to Nigeria’s military in the early 1980s. Moreover, he told a Federal High Court in Lagos in December 2024 that he supplied lesser firearms to the Ministry of Defence during the military era. This interview goes further, because he now says he sold to any buyer with money, including buyers outside Nigeria.
Kalu’s critics will likely seize on the exchange. The proliferation of small arms fuels kidnapping, banditry and armed attacks across Nigeria. Therefore, many Nigerians may question why a sitting senator declines to say where the weapons came from. Supporters, in contrast, may argue that Kalu spoke candidly about a business he abandoned long ago. Soj World News has no evidence that any sale he described was illegal, and Kalu did not say any was.
The senator’s office has not responded to requests for comment on when the sales took place or who bought the weapons. Soj World News will update this report when it does.
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