ABUJA — Former Abia State governor and sitting Abia North senator, Orji Uzor Kalu, has revealed that he previously operated as an international heavy arms trader, selling military-grade weaponry across Africa before abandoning the trade at his parents’ insistence.
Speaking during a live television interview on Arise News on Monday, the Nigerian lawmaker stated that his commercial activities once extended far beyond domestic business into cross-border armaments trade.
When asked directly by the interviewer if he had been an arms dealer, Senator Kalu confirmed his involvement, explaining that he exited the industry after his parents intervened.
“My parents, my mother, my father came and said I must stop, and I stopped,” Kalu said during the broadcast.
Weaponry sales and international contacts
Dismissing questions over the ethical implications of selling hardware used in violent conflicts, Kalu stated that his primary objective was purely financial.
“I was selling guns to make money, whether they blow up it’s not my business,” Kalu remarked, clarifying that he did not sell small arms but dealt exclusively in heavy weapons traded on a state-to-state basis.
When asked if he supplied weapons to specific African regimes or liberation movements, including the African National Congress (ANC) during South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle or Libya under the late Muammar Gaddafi, Kalu affirmed that his operations catered to any client with sufficient capital.
“To anybody that had money to buy. If you have the money, you want to buy in D.R.C., I sell to you; you want to buy in Namibia… I would sell to you,” he stated, declining to reveal his specific supply sources, describing them as proprietary business secrets.
Diplomatic ties with South African leadership
During the interview, the senator also reflected on his long-standing ties with successive South African heads of state, attributing his diplomatic and commercial entry in the region to a personal friendship with the late former President Nelson Mandela.
Kalu claimed Mandela introduced him to key figures within the ANC, including former Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, as well as incumbent President Cyril Ramaphosa, maintaining close relationships across successive South African administrations over several decades.
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