He was first elected into the 5th Assembly of the Federal House of Representatives in 2003 and he served till 2007, representing Igboeze North/Udenu Federal Constituency.  He was re-elected to the 6th Assembly of the Federal House of Representatives in 2007 and served for another four years, ending in 2011. Yet, he was once again re-elected to the 7th Assembly to serve from 2011-2015. He thus became the longest serving National Assembly member in the Enugu North Senatorial District of Enugu state before he became governor.

As a parliamentarian, he clearly made his mark at the National Assembly, holding leadership positions in vital committees. Between 2003 and 2007, he served as Deputy Chairman of the House Committee on Public Service Matters and Deputy Chairman of the House Committee on Pensions, an era during which  the revolutionary Pension Act 2004 was enacted. In 2007, he was made Chairman of the House Committee on Marine Transport.

During his tenure as chairman of the House Committee on Marine Transport, the maritime sector underwent a revolution that gave birth to new legislations aimed at equipping the nation’s marine transport sector in line with what obtains  internationally. In view of his diligent performance, he was re-appointed on re-election to the National Assembly in 2011 and thus became the first legislator to hold that position for two consecutive legislative sessions in the history of the National Assembly.

Following his party’s primary election of 8 December 2014 in Enugu, Ugwuanyi won PDP’s gubernatorial ticket, which made him the State’s PDP governorship candidate for the 2015 general election. However, another PDP gubernatorial aspirant, Senator Ayogu Eze, was not happy with the conduct of the Primary Elections. Eze went to court to challenge the legitimacy of Ugwuanyi’s emergence as the PDP’s flag-bearer for Enugu State governorship. Eze’s petition was finally dismissed by Justice Evoh Stephen Chukwu, an Abuja Federal High Court Judge, who ruled that Ugwuanyi’s election in the gubernatorial primary was legitimate and legally binding.

Lawrence Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi is a Nigerian politician who was elected the Executive Governor of Enugu State in April 2015 and was sworn in on 29 May 2015. He was a member of the House of Representatives of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for 12 years.

He will be retiring from his current position as the deputy governor of Benue State in the 2023 election