Category: Saturday Magazine

• Says we earned N7,000 as senators
• Explains how Nigerian civil war turned Igbo into business people
• Reveals plans to revive moribund TV station, Minaj

His agility and dexterity belie his age. Second Republic Senator, Mike Ajegbo, who turned 75 today, is a living testimony of grace. And he is, indeed, grateful because he has survived situations that most men could not deal with. A man who had a bullet stuck in his body for close to 30 years, survived prostate cancer at a frightening stage and overcame the dreaded COVID-19 infection together with his wife and son should have every reason to be thankful. In this interview, Ajegbo speaks about his political career, his time in the Biafran Army and his plans to revive his television station, Minaj Broadcast International (MBI), the first television station on satellite in Africa and Europe, among other issues. He spoke with SAM ANOKAM.

How have you managed to remain scandal-free as a politician?

My background would explain the person that 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, where I was growing up in Onitsha, when men saw a woman they wanted to marry, like some people do these days, they send them to the university. Then, they sent them to where they could learn a trade. My mother used to have a lot of people sent to her. She would teach them how to sew, bake and all that. In short, my background meant that I had a family name to protect, so, I could not afford to do anything to mess it up. I think that influenced my life.

My elementary school was at Holy Trinity School, Onitsha. My secondary school was Christ the King College, Onitsha. Then I went to do higher school at Government College Akpugo. That was when the war broke out, so I didn’t finish but ended up entering the Biafran army and was commissioned as an officer.

I had a bullet wound which I carried in my body for almost 30 years. I had a shrapnel wound. Then after the civil war, I took entrance exam into University of Ife and University of Nigeria, and I passed the two to read Law. We decided that I should go to the University of Ife so that I would be out of the war environment and see how the rest of the country was 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 between 1975 and 1976. I then came into 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. In the law firm, President Babangida came up with opening up the media. I applied and I was one of those given licences for television station. I started Minaj Broadcast. It was the biggest partnership then in Nigeria. Most of the time, they had single practitioners, though they employed juniors. Ours came out as the biggest partnership at that point in time. Another partnership that was interesting at that point in time 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 legal practice then.

When I got my licence, I started my media. From there in 1988, even before I got my licence, I was a nominated as member of the Constituents Assembly. Also in 1994/95, I was also nominated as member of the constitutional conference. The Constituent Assembly was under President Babangida while Constitutional Conference was under General Abacha. Then in 1999, I won 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 a number of 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 at today. After that issue, I started again. My wife also is a lawyer. She has a law firm. 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. The other gentleman, 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 and the process by which you became a lawmaker.

When I was in 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 had had so many military interventions and whenever the military came in, the only arm that suffered was the legislature. They became the supreme military council or whatever it was. They made 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 number one is supposed to be the legislature because they make laws. Everything is based on laws. What the executive is supposed to do is to execute the laws made by the National Assembly (legislature) while the judiciary interprets these laws. And what lawyers do basically is to plead before the courts that this is the law and this is how it should be interpreted. The opposing lawyer either agrees or disagrees, then the judge takes a decision. If you are a lawyer by training, it is easy for you to identify the good laws that should be retained or made and those laws that shouldn’t be retained.

You made reference to the Biafra war in which you were an active soldier. Before the civil war, how was the relationship between the major ethnic groups in the country? Did the war alter the relationship between the Igbo, the Hausa and the Yoruba?

When the war started, I was 18 years and in secondary school. The crisis started in 1966. The war itself began in 1967. My perception then could not be used as a yardstick. When the crisis started, it didn’t mean much to us young people until we started seeing the exodus of people moving back from the north to the east. Many of those people tried to trace their relatives and where they are from. It sort of destabilised the system.

For some of us that joined the army, it is true, there was a cause for Biafra, but the major thing is that we were trying to protect ourselves because the fear at that time was that the soldiers were coming to eliminate us. Some of us took the decision that I’d rather die by fighting than die doing nothing. And the Asaba massacre in a way justified the fears of so many people. There were so many mixed feelings. When the war started, the issue of sectionalism in eastern region wasn’t obvious than when the war started going wrong. And you know in all human situations, when you are not getting what you thought you would get, you will start looking for excuses. Some of the things that happened to alienate the Igbo man from the Ijaw man or the Efik man were most unnecessary. But it has happened and it has happened.

Some people blamed different actors for what happened, but the matter was that easterners were being killed in the north and we came back home. Nobody can deny that. But at the end of the day, Gowon declared no victor, no vanquished. And that encouraged a number of people to go back to their previous stations.

Another interesting thing that happened out of the war economically was the issue of flat 20 pounds for anybody who had pounds in the bank. That thing came up and it affected a lot of Igbo people. But the recovery was based on one fact. They had three divisions of the Nigerian army. The first division was pushing down from the north to Enugu area, the second division was pushing from the west into Onitsha area, then the third division was coming from the riverine areas. So, at the end of the war, you had the three divisions stationed in the east, basically Southeast.

Three interesting things happened. Every month they got paid their field allowance. Suddenly, people started getting money. I know how soldiers spend money. By the end of the month, he has finished his money and owing in expectation of his salary for the following month. That started empowering the people of the Southeast. It was not planned. And these soldiers were stationed there for quite a while. Before you knew it, the average person from the Southeast could survive. And it enhanced the trading capabilities of people from the Southeast because he had to trade to make quick money.

Another thing that happened was that a lot of the Nigerian soldiers, including former President Babangida, ended up marrying people from that area. So, the issue of reconciliation in a way started happening without even being planned. And then, one other thing that happened was that it started affecting the education system in the Southeast. Trading then became more important. It is not too long ago that awareness was created as to why people should go to school.

One other thing that happened simultaneously after the war was the issue of oil business. The oil hit Nigeria up to the extent that our then Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon said that money was not our problem but how to spend it. Then that led to so many things. When the government now decided to resettle the soldiers in various areas, they started ordering cement to build barracks and funny enough, the Ministry of Defence was in charge of that. A mistake was made; they took the agreement of one person without taking into account a number of other things. Before you knew it, they had over a hundred ships bringing cement to Nigeria.

I don’t know if you have heard about cement armada. Our ports were blocked. That gave rise to the building of Tin Can Island ports. However, the depths of the Port Harcourt and Calabar ports weren’t enough to accommodate big ships. All the ships carrying cement were heading to Apapa. These are my personal opinion about the consequences of what happened.

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Let us talk about your time in the Senate. Now senators are collecting as much as N500m as constituency allowance. Was it so during your time at the Senate?

Let me explain that, because whenever I hear about it I get upset. This issue started during our own time. You know many Nigerians are not very literate. When you win, one of the things they expect is development in your area, and you have legislators from all parts of the country. There was a negotiation with the executive that for each constituency, they should vote an amount of N500m to do a job in the constituency. That money was not meant for the senators or members of the house. That money is residence with the ministry.

What happened during my own time was that I held a meeting with the members of the house from my senatorial district and we agreed that what should be done there would be boreholes. We now wrote to the Ministry of Works that the N500m allocated should be used for this, and I was the Chairman, Senate Committee on Judiciary and Legal Matters and part of my duties were to ensure about the constitution. I continued emphasising it when I was in the Senate.

If you look at the house, you would see it is not the duty of any legislator to execute any project. It is the duty of the executive. But as the legislator, you have to vote money for projects to be carried out. During my time, there was no legislator that was involved in the disbursement of money. What happened thereafter, I cannot vouch for them. But at my own time, we had people in the Senate who meant well. Take for example Anambra where I come from. We had Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, myself, Dr. Ori Obula. Then from Abia, you have people like Gen. Ike Nwachukwu and others from different parts of the country. We had people of substance. The issue between 1999 and 2003 was to put the government on a sound footing after the military rule so that the military doesn’t have any reason to come back. This issue of N500m is not money meant for senators; it is money meant for projects to be executed in a senatorial district.

What was your take home at that time?

Honestly, I cannot remember. But it was a ridiculous amount like N7,000 or thereabout. I never even bothered touching it, I had a business. I had to check to know exactly the amount plus allowances here and there. We didn’t pay ourselves, based on the constitution. The revenue mobilization committee decided how much we were paid. So, we did not fix our salaries. At our own time, the revenue allocation and mobilization committee was responsible for that. That is what the constitution says.

When the military was in power, there were some visible things that we could see. But with democracy, we cannot see anything except looting here and there. How did we get here?

Looking at it from the outside, because I left that place in 2003, a number of things happened. One, we 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 enough to start to stabilise things but not enough to push Nigeria out of where it is into a developed economy.

The only person who didn’t make it but I was happy with what he said was Peter Obi. He has a basic philosophy to move the country from consumption to production. At least he knows where he wants to go and how he wants to get there. Whether he could have achieved it is a different thing. The other contestants, I cannot tell you I understood where they want to move us to. Our present president has had a stint as governor of Lagos State. He had an idea on how to develop Lagos State, but he didn’t communicate to Nigerians what he wants to do for Nigerians. What was being said was that because he developed Lagos State, he would develop Nigeria, but I don’t think the two can work. But whether we like it or not, he is now the President of the country, so we must do what we can to ensure he succeeds, because if he succeeds the country succeeds.

I like us to give him constructive criticism. We are no longer running an election, now it is the issue of governance, how to get Nigeria out of the mess we are in. But if you look backwards, the only person I have seen who had an idea of what he wanted to do and came into the scene was President Babangida. At least up to the time of Orkar coup, he had brilliant ideas. But still a lot of things went wrong, because if you ascend the throne by battle, you have to ensure you maintain loyalty of the people around you, and in trying to maintain their loyalty a lot of things may go wrong.

What happened to Minaj?

I told you that I was diagnosed of prostate cancer. But before then, I wanted to establish an African network. I was on satellite; the first television station on satellite and I was the first in Europe. That happened in 1998 when Abdusalami announced his political programme. That was when I was building Minaj.  I wanted to build an African network. I had an arrangement with a company called PANAMSAT in those days to give us receivers which we were going to put round African countries. I put in some places and those ones have gone like in Cameroon, Namibia, Kenya, even Ghana. I was in Kenya with my team when my wife, who was in London, called me to say Chief Alex Ekwueme called. He wanted to see me but I was in East Africa. He said I should try and call him, and she gave me his number, so I called him.

We started talking and he asked why I was not in Nigeria to register because registration was ongoing. I said I purposely left Nigeria because if I registered, I would end up being dragged into politics. But if I don’t register, I will not vote and I will not be voted for. He kept me on the phone for over an hour telling me why I must go and register. He told me that late Abubarkar Rimi also told him the same thing. He had to convince me to go and register. Anyway, I called my team, telling them we had to cut short our trip because we had visited Uganda and Zambia trying to build up alliances. We flew back To Nigeria.

I wanted to go back to the east, but by the time I got back to Lagos, I decided to stay put because if I went to the east to register, that is governorship waiting for me to come and contest for. I registered in Lagos, so I couldn’t contest for governorship. But eventually, having registered in any state in the federation, you can run for a federal post. That was why I was able to run for Senate.

At that point in time, Minaj had English Premier League, Bundesliga, Minaj and NFL. Part of the arrangement was for me to have an African station and I would now sublet the rights to different people around Africa. We were already in negotiation with some people in East Africa, South Africa and even Cameroon to allow them to download the matches. I came back, registered and then travelled to see Ekwueme in London. When I got there, he had left for the U.S. I then went to see him in Washington.

Then, the father of my very good friend died. That was in December 1998. We went to the village and it was there that they convinced me to run for the Senate. And PDP nomination was closing January 20. I abandoned everything I was doing to get the PDP nomination. I had very tough people contending with me, like the late Ani Okonkwo, Chris Ngige, the late Mark Okoye, then Architect Ejikeme and myself.  I couldn’t leave Obosi, and during that period, I forgot I didn’t sign off for English Premier League. They were looking for me for two weeks. That was how I lost the English Premier League. That was one major thing that hit Minaj. I then faced politics.

I won the Senate seat and went to the Senate. One of my executive directors I thought would have captured my vision didn’t really get it right. Then my wife took over to stabilise it. When I got back from the Senate in 2003, I told myself I would rebuild it. After all, I was the one that built it. But I was diagnosed of prostate cancer and I forgot about everything to fight cancer.  Five years later when I got myself, I decided to get people to run the place. Some young men came to me that they would run the place. We signed a management agreement for them to go and manage the place; I didn’t realise they were fronting for some people. After a while, they started saying that they had taken over Minaj. I got upset and decided to shut it down.

When I tried to revive it, it wasn’t working out. But there is one interesting thing about broadcasting in Nigeria. In the developed world, the media is divided into two: government owned media and commercial. The way government owned earns its money is not the way private media earns its money. Private media depends on commercials but government owned media depends on funding from government. Take for example, the BBC. People pay TV licence. In Nigeria, the government medium get funded through the budget and they still collect money for commercials, and because it is government, they have a bigger reach. So, people would rather patronise them because an advertiser is not interested whether you are private or commercial, he wants to get his message across, and how does he reach the biggest market? It is through the government media. You as an individual are competing with government.

That is the story of Minaj. But if God grants me more life, before I quit the scene, I would want to revive Minaj. And I have plans for it. God willing by next year, I will put things together.

Do you have any regrets looking back?

I don’t regret anything. I have this sense of self contentment. I am happy with myself.  Oyinbo people have a saying that water has passed under the bridge, so, if you start regretting, where will you stop, where will you even start? It has happened, it as happened. Take it that way, look at the future.

It is very obvious that you do not look your age, with your personality and everything else, how do you cope with women?

I told you something, I have this sense of self contentment. I shut down my phone. I had about 124 lines blocked.  I don’t know if it has increased. I am not a monk though. One philosophy I always have from time is that I enjoy it better when I chase a woman and succeeds. But unfortunately, at this age, what are you trying to prove?

At 75, what are you most grateful for?

I am having a thanksgiving service. I am thanking God for a healthy life. God has saved me in both big and small occasions. One, during the civil war, I had bullet wounds, I could have died. I had cancer and the PSA was over 40, when once it is 10, it is trouble, I survived it. I had COVID-19, myself, my wife and one of my kids, and we survived it.