• Ekuwunife: “Soludo’s wife “slept with Mbadinuju..I’ve proof.”
• Soludo’s wife: “I never met Mbadinuju. I won’t dignify her with a response. “
By Obinna Uballa
The Anambra governorship race has descended into one of the most vicious personal battles, as Senator Uche Ekwunife, the All Progressives Congress (APC) deputy governorship candidate, doubled down on allegations that Nonye Soludo, wife of Governor Chukwuma Soludo, had an affair with late former governor of the State, Dr Chinweoke Mbadinuju.
In an audio recording that surfaced on social media, Ekwunife, a former senator representing Anambra Central, was heard vowing to “open the Pandora’s box” by dragging the First Lady into the mudslinging if her own reputation continued to be attacked.
“Soludo wants to damage me, I won’t keep quiet. He has a wife. When he attacks me, I will attack his wife because he has a wife. I’m out. What will they say about me that they haven’t said? Mbadunuju this Mbadunuju that. Soludo’s wife also slept with Mbadunuju. Anybody that calls me now, I will disgrace the person’s wife, no matter who you are,” Ekwunife could be heard declaring in the audio.
“If they are fabricating all these things about me without me doing it, what makes you think I will not fabricate the same thing about you? At my level, some men want to destroy disgrace me. For what? Let’s open the pandora box so that everyone’s pandora box will be on the road. Doesn’t he have a wife?” she said in the leaked phone call.
From the phone conversation, Ekwunife had apparently called the individual on the other side of the phone to ask why he was supporting Soludo against her, following her initial allegations against the Anambra First Lady.
Soludo’s wife, had meanwhile, responded, noting that she would not dignify Ekwunife with a response, while maintaining that she never met Mbadinuju.
“My attention has just been drawn to a post going round that Mrs Soludo replied Ekwunife. Not at all! I am too busy with my children as schools resume. Besides, I can’t condescend to replying inanities and fabrications. An Igbo adage says that you don’t exchange words with a madman, otherwise the passersby will not know the difference,” she wrote via her Facebook page. “For the records, I never met Dr Mbadinuju of blessed memory. NEVER! As for the other fabrications — PITIABLE and LAUGHABLE!” she declared.
The New Diplomat had reported that the Soludo versus Ekwunife clash has been escalating for days. The governor, seeking re-election on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), ignited the row when he publicly questioned the authenticity of Ekwunife’s PhD during a campaign rally.
“So this person wrote that she has senior secondary school certificate, then she also said that she has a PhD. 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.
“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?” Soludo declared.
Ekwunife hit back with a blistering video response, lacing her rebuttal with insults aimed directly at the governor’s personal hygiene and integrity.
“The fake professor that says he is governing a state, please leave me alone. 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.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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,” she thundered.
