Oguta, Imo State-born maverick Politician, Senator Francis Arthur Nzeribe, is dead, a reliable source informed.
He was aged 84.
A reliable family source disclosed this on Sunday afternoon on the condition of anonymity.
Senator Nzeribe, a second Republic politician, fondly called Ogbuagu, Oshiji, would be remembered for his radical days in the Senate.
The veteran politician would be remembered as one of the prime movers of the infamous Association for a Better Nigeria (ABN), which backed the General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) military administration.
Through this association, he campaigned and convinced IBB to annul the June 12, 1993 presidential election, adjudged to be the fairest, freest and most transparent in the history of Nigeria. The election was said to have been won by the late MKO Abiola.
Nzeribe attended the Bishop Shanahan College, Orlu and Holy Ghost College, Owerri. He got a scholarship from the Nigerian Ports Authority in 1958 to study Marine Engineering in England. By 1960, he sold life insurance to black immigrants in Britain. At a point, he was said to have met Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana that year and started working for him in the area of public relations.
He bought his first Rolls Royce car a year later. After the fall of Nkrumah in 1966, he lost power and influence in Ghana.
In 1969, Nzeribe started the Fanz Organisation based in London. The organisation dealt in heavy construction, arms, oil brokerage, publishing and property investment. It also engaged in businesses in the Middle East and the Gulf region. By 1979, Fanz had an annual trading turnover of £70 million. Today, he is believed to be worth over $1.5 billion.
In Nigeria, Nzeribe built Sentinel Assurance and other companies. His country home in Oguta is called Haven of Peace, a plush estate that has multiple mansions that still compete with anything you can get anywhere in the country.
The billionaire businessman was elected into the Senate in the Third Republic. He represented the Orlu senatorial zone in 1999 and was re-elected in 2003.
However, the tide seem turned against him in November 2002 when the then president of the Senate, Anyim Pius Anyim, suspended him indefinitely following an allegation of a N22 million fraud. Nzeribe was said to be planning an impeachment motion against Anyim at the time.
Arthur Nzeribe’s power and influence further declined in April 2006, when the Orlu People’s Consultative Assembly, sponsored by the then governor of Imo State, Chief Achike Udenwa, staged what it called a “One-million-man march” to mobilise support for Nzeribe’s recall from the Senate. In December 2006, Osita Izunaso defeated him during the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) primary election. However, in August 2007, Nzeribe was appointed a member of the Board of Trustees of the PDP.
Since his defeat by Izunaso, with the assistance of Udenwa, Nzeribe appeared to have disappeared from the public scene. That was before he became sick, a situation attributed to old age and a domestic accident he had in his country home.