‘ Nigeria Has Not Had A Visionary Leader With
Chief Mike Nnanye Ajegbo, a lawyer, has been part of the constitution- making process of the country since 1988. He was a member of the Constituent Assembly in 1988/ 89. In 1994/ 95, he was also in the Constitutional Conference. He served as the Chairman, Senate Committee on Judiciary and Legal Matters between 1999 and 2003. Ajegbo was also a member of the Political Reform Committee during the administration of former president Olusegun Obasanjo. In this interview with ENIOLA DANIEL, he speaks on sundry issues in the country, including his role in the civil war while also talking about his life at 75.
MCongratulations on clocking 75. Tell us, the journey so far; how have you been able to remain scandal- free as a politician? Y background would explain the person I am. My father was the first attorney general of Eastern Nigeria. He became a judge of the Supreme Court in 1964 and came to Lagos, then went back to the east during the Nigerian crisis. I was born in 1949. In the 50s, when I was growing up in Onitsha, when a man sees a woman he wants to marry, like what some people do these days, he sends her to the university. Then, they sent women to where they could learn something and my mother used to have a lot of people sent to her. She taught them how to sew, bake and all that. In short, my background meant that I had a family name to protect. So, I cannot afford to do anything to mess it up. I think that influenced my life. My elementary school was at Holy Trinity School, Onitsha; secondary school, Christ the King College, Onitsha. Then I went to do higher school at Government College, Akpugo; that was when the war broke out. I didn’t finish, I ended up entering the Biafran army. I was commissioned as an officer.
I had a bullet wound, which I carried in my body for almost 30 years. I had shrapnel wound. Then after the civil war, I took the entrance examination into the University of Ife and the University of Nigeria. I passed the two to read Law. We decided that I should go to the University of Ife so that I could be out of the war environment and see how the rest of the country is doing. I graduated in 1974. I entered in 1970, did a four- year course then came to Lagos for the Nigerian Law School after which I went to do my youth service in then Benue- Plateau State in 1975/ 76.
I came to Lagos and started legal practice. In 1979, four of us – Abuka, Jibue, Iloga and Nwaorgu – teamed up to form a law firm; I was a partner in the law firm. It was the biggest partnership then in Nigeria. Most of the time, the law firms had single practitioners, though they employed juniors. Ours came out as the biggest partnership.
Another interesting partnership then was the Odujiris. – Ade Odujiri, Adefulo and Ayelaja; but we were four, they were three. We became the biggest and of course, we made a lot of waves in the legal practice.
President Ibrahim Babangida came up with opening up the media. I applied and I was one of those given licences for a television station. I started Minaj Broadcast.
When I got my licence, I started my media. In 1988, even before I got my licence, I was nominated as a member of the Constituent Assembly. Also in 1994/ 95, I was also nominated as
a member of the Constitutional Conference. The Constituent Assembly was under President Babangida while the Constitutional Conference was under General Sani Abacha. Then in 1999, I won an election to the Senate. I was in the Senate for four years. When I left the Senate in 2003, I didn’t want to go back into politics for several reasons including the feeling that my business was suffering but funny enough, instead of doing that, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
For five years, I was battling cancer. I am a cancer survivor as of today. After that issue, I started again. My wife also is a lawyer. She has a law firm, so I teamed up with her. We have offices in Lagos and Abuja.
When I left to do my broadcast business, our law partnership after a while didn’t work out again. One of our partners, Mr. Nworgu, is now late. We didn’t continue with that partnership. Mr. Chidi Ilogwu is now a learned silk and Mr. P. C. Abuka is a big businessman. After my cancer, I got back into business and my law practice.
Tell us about your political life, the process of being a lawyer to becoming a lawmaker?
When I was in the University of Ife, I was elected as the Secretary General, National Union of Nigerian Students. I was active in student politics. The two are actually related because there is something that has been happening in Nigeria; the fact that we have had so many military interventions that whenever the military comes in, the only arm that suffers is the legislature. The military makes laws. They are the executives but they make laws. But under a democratic set up, you have the executive, the judiciary and the legislature. In actual fact, the legislature is supposed to be the number one because they make laws. What the executive is supposed to do is to execute laws made by the National Assembly, while the judiciary interprets these laws.
You referred to the Biafra war, revealing that you were an active soldier on the side of Biafra. How was the relationship between the Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba before the civil war?
We have never from then till now had a visionary leader, somebody who says I want to take Nigeria from here to there. The only person that tried to do something was Chief Obasanjo. He had been a head of state, so he came with some experience; but the experience he came with was only enough to stabilise things but not enough to push Nigeria out of where it was into a developed economy.