- Ekwunife: “Your mouth smells, you’re dirtiest gov, ordour from your mouth is stinking.. “
- Soludo: ” Fake PhD, with $60 you buy it! No diploma, no degree yet she claim a PhD..”
By Obinna Uballa
The Anambra political space has descended into a storm of insults ahead of the state’s governorship election coming up on November 8, as Governor Chukwuma Soludo and Uche Ekwunife, deputy governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), clashed bitterly over qualifications, integrity, and personal conduct.
The row, now dominating social media, started when Soludo, the incumbent governor and candidate of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), questioned the authenticity of Ekwunife’s academic credentials during a campaign event.
“So this person wrote that she has senior secondary school certificate, then she also said that she has a PhD,” the governor said in a video clip that has since gone viral. “But please, how can you have secondary school certificate and you don’t have a diploma, you don’t have a degree, you don’t have masters, but you have PhD?
“Somebody investigated and we discovered an abomination, a PhD certificate from a fake institution. If you pay $60, even as a vulcanizer, they will give you certificate. That university has no accreditation in the United States and it is not recognised by the National Universities Commission. Yet you’re parading it. When you write your name you put PhD. It is better you just write senior secondary school certificate.”
Soludo added: “After November 8, when we finish dealing with Okeite (ritualists), we will go after those with the fake certificates because they are confusing our children. Don’t go and use money to buy certificate and be parading around with it. What are you telling our children?”
But Ekwunife, a former senator representing Anambra Central, fired back with a scorching video reply that has further ignited debate.
“The fake professor that says he is governing a state, please leave me alone,” she charged. “Soludo, you contested for governor twice and failed, before (Willie) Obiano supported you to become governor. For the past three years that you have been governor, it is only suffering and deaths that the state is passing through. Under your watch, two young state assembly members died under questionable circumstances. Have you investigated who killed them? You know you have failed woefully.”
Taking aim at Soludo’s academic record, she declared: “You are saying my certificate is fake? Then go to court. Don’t wait until November 8. You also said I don’t have a master’s. UNIZIK is close to you, why not go there and ask them? It appears that your own professorship is different. I now understand what people have been saying: that your own professor is an award, not earned. If you earned it, show us where and how you earned it. It is just an award your department gave you, yet you are making noise.”
Then came the most personal jab: “Soludo, has anybody told you that your mouth smells? You are the dirtiest governor in the whole of Africa. Go and tell your wife to buy deodorant for you so that when you are coming out, you apply it. When you open your mouth to speak, the kind of odour that comes out is stinking and embarrassing for a governor.”
Ekwunife also accused the governor of misogyny, referencing his alleged remark that a married woman should not aspire to political office. “You said that a woman that is married cannot be governor. Well, your own daughter is married now in Anambra. So you have disqualified her if she has political ambition.”
Defiant, she vowed that Soludo could not derail her ambitions: “I am where I am today without one percent of your support. I can be president tomorrow without your support. You are too small to determine my future. One million Soludos cannot stop me.”
The fiery exchanges have left Anambra’s political climate supercharged ahead of the November 8 governorship election, with observers warning that the rhetoric may overshadow serious debate on governance.
