Photo: The National Assembly, Abuja — file photo, Wikimedia Commons
Senator Orji Uzor Kalu has said he once sold heavy weapons internationally as a young businessman, supplying anyone who had the money to buy, before his parents made him stop.
The former Abia State governor, who now represents Abia North in the Senate, made the remarks on Arise Television's Prime Time programme on Monday evening, while discussing his early business career and his relationships in southern Africa. He was describing a past business, not a current one.
Asked directly whether he was an arms dealer, Kalu answered: "Yes, so I stopped because my parents, my mother, my father came and said I must stop, and I stopped."
- Kalu said the weapons were heavy arms sold country to country, not small arms
- He said he sold to buyers in places including DR Congo and Namibia, and to "anybody that had money to buy"
- He declined to say where the weapons came from: "It's only my business"
What Orji Kalu said on Arise TV
Pressed on whether he cared what the weapons were used for, Kalu said: "No, no, no, no, no, no. I was selling guns to make money, whether they blow up it's not my business."
On supplies connected to South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle, he said: "No, I was selling to anybody who wants 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, you want to buy…"
He also spoke about Libya's late leader Muammar Gaddafi in the same context: "To anybody that had money to buy… May his soul rest in peace. He was a good man. If you have money to buy, when I was selling, I would sell to you."
Why Kalu says it was not Nigeria's small-arms trade
Kalu was keen to separate his past trade from Nigeria's present-day small-arms problem. "No, these are heavy arms that were sold country to country," he said, when the interviewer raised the local proliferation issue.
Profiles of Kalu's business career have long noted that his breakthrough in the early 1980s came through Nigerian military contracts to import and supply arms and ammunition. Monday's interview is, however, the most direct account he has given of the international side of that trade in his own words.
What happens next
Clips of the interview circulated widely on social media on Monday night, in some cases framed as though Kalu was describing a present-day business. The full Arise interview shows he was speaking about his early career and a trade he says he abandoned at his parents' insistence. There has been no official reaction to the remarks in the reports reviewed.
Credit: Vanguard, reporting the Arise Television Prime Time interview of November 9, 2026.
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