‘Whether They Blow Up People Was Not My Business’: Kalu, From Arms Dealer To Senator, And The Moral Vacuum

There is a sentence in Senator Orji Uzor Kalu’s interview that should stop every Nigerian in their tracks.

“I was selling guns to make money. Whether they blow up people was not my business.”

The Orji Kalu arms trade admission, delivered casually during an appearance on Arise PrimeTime on Monday, is not just a confession.

It is a window into a world where weapons are commodities, lives are collateral, and the only question that matters is whether the buyer has the money. It is also a reminder that the men who make laws in Nigeria are sometimes the same men who profited from the violence those laws are meant to prevent, ValidViewNetwork reports .

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THE ADMISSION

Kalu confirmed that he was an international arms dealer, selling heavy weapons to buyers in different countries .

When asked whether he was concerned about how the weapons would be used, he was dismissive. “No, no, no, no, no, no. I was selling guns to make money, whether they blow up it’s not my business”. He stated that he sold to anyone with the money.

“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 confirmed that he sold to Libya under Muammar Gaddafi. “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” .

He stopped, he said, only because his parents intervened .

THE CONTEXT

Kalu’s admission comes amid a security crisis in Nigeria that has been fuelled, in part, by the proliferation of small arms and light weapons.

The Nigerian government has repeatedly blamed the influx of weapons from across Africa’s porous borders for the rise of banditry, kidnapping and insurgency.

The United Nations has estimated that there are over 500 million small arms and light weapons in circulation in Africa, many of them in Nigeria.

Kalu’s weapons were heavy arms, not small arms. But the principle is the same: the trade in weapons, whether heavy or light, is a trade in death.

And the men who profit from it are not the ones who die.

THE ANALYTICAL LENS

There is a word for what Kalu described: profiteering.

He sold weapons to anyone with money, regardless of who they were or what they intended to do with them. He did not ask questions. He did not care about the consequences. He was a merchant of death, and he was proud of it.

The fact that he is now a senator, a lawmaker, a man who votes on budgets and oversight and national security, is a damning indictment of Nigeria’s political system.

The Senate is supposed to be a chamber of sober reflection, a place where the nation’s best minds gather to make laws for the common good. Instead, it includes a man who has admitted to selling weapons to anyone with the money to buy them.

Kalu’s confession is not a crime. The arms trade, when conducted legally and with proper export controls, is a legitimate business.

But Kalu’s description of his business suggests no controls, no questions, no concerns. He sold to anyone. He did not care.

The question is not whether Kalu should be prosecuted. The question is whether Nigerians should accept that a man with this history sits in the Senate, making decisions about the security of the same citizens who were, in a sense, his customers’ potential victims.

The answer, for many, will be no. ValidViewNetwork reports.