Profile of Tony Anenih, Chairman, Board of Trustees, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)

STATE OF THE NATION

Weekly Newsletter of the Movement for Revolutionary Change (MRC). No 1, March 3-8, 2013

Profile of Tony Anenih, Chairman, Board of Trustees, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) 1. Born in 1933, he will be 80, August 2013. Obviously tired, but has refused to retire from public life.

2. His highest educational qualification was obtained at the Police College, Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria in the 60s.

3. He was the Chairman of the defunct Social Democratic Party when the Late M.K.O Abiola won the Presidency, but was also among the very first to betray the Late Politician.

4. After late General Sani Abacha took over in November 1993, Anenih dumped the mandate won with Abiola as flag bearer, hob nobbed with the military junta and became a political consultant for Abacha’s self-succession agenda

5. In the new few years, Tony Anenih worked as was one of the propagandists and lobbyists of the Abacha military government. He supported and justified the the hanging of the late Ogoni activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others in an interview he granted the BBC in 1997 during the Commonwealth Summit in Scotland.

6. He was the arrow head of the failed bid by former President Obasanjo to elongate his tenure for a third time. Also he is a well known opportunist with no political principles. In the preparations towards the 2007 Presidential elections, Anenih supported former Rivers state Governor Peter Odili, but when the later lost out, Anenih switched loyalty to late President Umaru Yar’adua.

7. Under the succeeding regime, his wife Iyom Josephine Anenih was appointed Minister of Women Affairs by the then Acting President Goodluck Jonathan, perhaps the only couple in Nigeria to have served as Federal Ministers in Nigeria, an example of how the Nigerian state has been cornered and privatized. 8. An ad hoc committee of Nigeria Upper Legislative Chamber, (the Senate) led by Heineken Lokpobiri in October 2009, investigated contracts running into more than N300 billion during the Obasanjo administration and recommended Anenih’s criminal prosecution, for award of contracts with unregistered companies, inflated rates, and without budgetary provision. Under pressure, the Senate shelved consideration of the report indefinitely and Almighty Anenih is yet to be prosecuted till now. Anenih was Minister of Works and Housing in 1999-2003.

9. The Central Bank of Nigeria in October 2009, released a list of debtors of five audited bank. Top of the rank was Mettle Energy and Gas limited, with links to Chief Tony Anenih and Osahon Asemota. The coy owed N2,065 million.

10. The Lower house- the House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts once summoned him to defend his actions on a sum of N2.3 billion allegedly spent on failed road contract in Nasarawa State in 2006. The contractor, Torno Internazionale Nigeria Limited allegedly absconded from the country after collecting the sum of N1.8 billion without executing the road project contract awarded. Anenih as Minister of Works and Housing awarded the contract.

11. In spite of shady records, he was appointed Chairman of Nigeria’s ‘’juicy’’ parastatal- the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) last year, by President Jonathan Goodluck. Anenih’s predecessor in that same office, Olabode George, a former National Vice Chairman of the PDP was jailed 30 months for contracts’ inflation during his tenure as Nigerian Port Authority (NPA) Chairman. It is now Anenih’s turn to ‘’come and chop’’ at the NPA

12. Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State once indirectly accused Tony Anenh of being involved in the yet unresolved assassination of his private secretary- Olaitan Oyerinde. Oshimole’s words”: “ a certain old man, in his 80s, a godfather, in Edo state is the mastermind of the assassination of Olaitan Oyerinde.’

13. Former Abia State Governor, Orji Uzor Kalu, in an open letter to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, once accused Chief Tony Anenih as having vowed "to deal with me the way they dealt with Bola Ige." This, Kalu said, Anenih told his (Kalu's) deputy during a flight from Abuja to Owerri sometime in February, 2004.

14. Former Vice-Chancellor of the Ahmadu Bello University , Prof. Ango Abdullahi who also served as a Special Adviser on Food Security to former President Obasanjo, Zaria, in 2006, described Chief Anthony Anenih, as ‘’Nigeria's most dangerous politician’

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