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She ended well! *Echoes of testimonies, as Theresa Omolara Obu returns home in a blaze of glory
“Theresa Omolara Obu ended well. Her life ended in prayer. At the hour of her death, she received that which all Christian men and women desire, which is, pray for me now and at the hour of our death,” were the eternal words with which Father Ehi Omoragbon of St. Francis Catholic Church, Idimu, Lagos, opened his sermons on Friday September 1.
It was indeed a testimony as well as exhortation for the sea of heads of men and women, who came from far and wide, from all over Nigeria and beyond to bid farewell to the matriarch of the Mark Obu family of Umukwata Kingdom in Ukwuani Local Government Area of Delta State, who passed on, in Lagos, on August 9, 2023 at the age of 72.
The kaleidoscope of colours inside the massive church, which was almost filled to capacity, despite being a work day, and the almost airtight situation outside the expansive compound betrayed the telltale signs of a big event that could only be captured in superlatives, which corroborated the verdict of the priest that the tentacle of the matriarch not only spread far enough but her life touched many across the globe quite positively.
How did Father Omoragbon establish his conclusion that Ma Obu ended well and is currently resting in the bosom of the heavenly hosts? Of course, he did by simply recounting how she spread love, devoted her life and times towards humanity through her work in the church as a devoted Christian and other altruistic activities through a long career as medical personnel in the channel of saving lives. With these and other acts of kindness as a businesswoman and pro-social being, she was able to uplift the less-endowed in the society, healing many wounds physically and spiritually till her last hours.
The cleric narrated how indeed, her last days on earth were epitomised by the fountain of love that radiated around her, and how the affection which she emitted throughout her life, were returned in quantum measures by those she cared for, particularly her immediate family, who were never far from her.
This was crowned when she received the last sacraments that led her to a peaceful transition from life on earth to eternal rest – the sacrament of Extreme Unction – anointing of the sick – the desire of every Catholic and a privilege they get at their last hours.
Hear the priest: “At the hour of her passing in this life, our dear sister was not alone. The beloved husband stood with her, the church was at her side, the priests and the believers were there. And because the priests and the believers were at the side of this Christian woman, Jesus was there, because three had gathered in his name.
“And in his presence, our friend, Theresa renewed her baptismal profession and because she believed in the forgiveness of sins, she was called and she heard. She went softly to death and resurrection of Christ. May almighty God free you from all the punishments in this life and the life of the son. And after that, our dear sister was asked to be led by God into the kingdom of peace. She was admitted and she received the body of Christ. And for this beloved wife, at the hour of her death, everything was done in faith, in freedom and in love.
“Of love, this daughter of love, received and gave love, in good times, she was loved, she was loved in sickness. Her condition did not in any way make her any less loveable. The situation didn’t make her unwanted. Without counting costs, everything was done that this beloved daughter of God would live. The beloved husband and the children, who wanted to keep her were free and felt free to let her go and let the will of God be done in her life.
“Because of that freedom, we Christian men and women and church, we were free to bless her, saying, May the Lord Jesus Christ be with you and protect you, may He go before you to guide and stand behind you to give you strength. May He look upon you to keep you and bless you. Then that night, God said to this beloved daughter of us, come to me, you who have laboured and God gave this faithful servant rest from her dutiful labour – the labour of being a devoted wife, for whom being a wife was not a burden, the labour of raising children for which it was not a burden, but joy, the labour of helping God to give healing to the sick for which for her it was not a burden, but a deep source of consolation.
“With joy, she lived among women and men as a beloved daughter of God and through her somebody came to know the kindness of God. This beloved daughter with whom we gather this morning to worship for the last time on this side of life, trusted and worshipped God. Open-handedly, she gave with graciousness, she received forgiveness and she gave as well. And when the cross came, she picked up the cross and carried it with the strength of Christ. And I can stand here and testify that her living was not in vain.
“Now my brothers and sisters, in life, there are things that are vain and there are things that are meaningful. Today, let us set our eyes on things that last forever. For soon, very soon, the glories of this life will pass away and all will remain is what we did for Christ. Soon, very soon, the glory of life will pass away and only what we did for Christ will last.
“When the end comes for us as it came for our sister, she was ready. When the end comes for us, let it be said as it is said of our beloved sister, she tried and did her best to love. Let it be said, church that we tried and did the best we could to feed the hungry. And when the end comes, let it be said as it is said of our beloved daughter, let it be said of us too that we tried and did our best to love and serve humanity. When the end comes, and it will come, at an hour we do not know, church, let it be said, as it is said of our sister that we tried to do our best possible duty as we ought to.
“Our beloved sister, wife, friend, mother, grandmother, we know she was not perfect, but who is? None of us! She served and served and served again and again and again. Our friend, mother, sister a child of God was faithful. She did not deny in any way the father. She did not deny in any way even in the face of difficulty, the fidelity and the faithfulness of the Son. And at the end, I testify too that she trusted in the mercy and the forgiveness of the Holy Spirit.
“She did not deny the father, she did not deny the son, she did not deny the Holy Spirit. She was faithful and faithful all the way to the very end. So, now, let us hear what God said to the faithful servant: ‘“Welcome home. Enter into the joy of the Father.’”
Father Omoragbon, was actually not alone. His was indeed a further echo of the floodgate of testimonies that opened up from all quarters right from the outset of the news of her passing till she was finally interred, as many, whose lives she touched right from her childhood through her days as a professional nurse and as a businesswoman and leader in the church stepped forward to give account of her good life.
Pa Obu, the patriarch himself, in his tribute, had traced the beginning from their first meeting in December 1967 during a science, sent-forth party of Fatima College, Ikire in the present Osun State and how the friendship that ensued led to the tying of the nuptial knot, eight years later.
“We got introduced to each other and became friends. I cannot forget the memory of our friendship for eight years before we got married on 4th October, 1975… We sojourned together for 56 years, first as friends for eight years and marriage for 48 years,” he recounted.
The intensity, level and quality of love that existed were such that twice, she nearly blocked the patriarch, a first class engineer, astute businessman, philanthropist and community leader from taking well-deserved traditional titles, having kicked against the idea, on the ground, according to him, that it could lead him into taking other wives, who would come in-between them and mess up what they shared.
Yet, to underscore the reciprocity of the mutual affection, the titles were taken without other women showing up. Thus, it was a win-win situation, especially when that of The Knight of St. Mulumba Nigeria, a Christian equivalent came in 1997.
He continued: “She was a very lovely friend and wife. She was very honest and pious. She could be quiet and cool, but she had a very strong character, such that when she took a decision on issues, she stood by it. She could be very stubborn, but she meant good on such issues and that my inputs are always needed to take a decision. We had our disagreements on many issues, but we found ways to resolve them.”
On the homefront, particularly about the children, he added: “My wife did not like travelling. Most mothers would have taken the advantage of having children abroad to leave behind their husbands, but my wife was an exception. She preferred to talk on hours on phone daily to all of them one after the other than travel. She loved her children and grandchildren that she could sacrifice all her savings to please them. She was very faithful, honest and respectful. Even in her sickness she was still struggling to play the role of a wife and mother always asking after the welfare of everyone. She will surely be missed by all the children especially our sons who were with her all the time during her illness. We are sure you are with our Lords Jesus Christ and praying for us. Rest in peace, till we meet to part no more.”
What an emotional way of ending an epic elegy for a soulmate with whom one had shared 56 years of life, climbing the steep, slippery road, falling and pulling each other up in the trudging journey? How else could one capture such enthralling experience?
The testimonies of the children were no less revealing. From Osai Justina Ojigho, Omakolo Christiana Omotayo Ugowe, Ifeoma Gbenedio, Nwaka Obu, the daughters, to Chukwuma Tolupe Obu and Emeka Obu, the sons, through the grandchildren to the in-laws, family members, school mates, fellow workers, business partners, friends and well-wishers, who paid tributes in torrents of homage, it was clear that the words of Father Ehi Omoragbon, were in no way misplaced.
Centuries ago, the Romans wrote on their walls – vox populi vox Dei! If indeed the voice of the people is the voice of God, it then means that Theresa Omolara Obu, now has the best of the two worlds – a very positive, eventful and remarkable life on earth and now a blissful rest in heaven. What a way to END WELL!
I will always refer to the encounter I once had with Kenneth Idiodi. He was then the leader of the Rosicrucian Society in Nigeria, otherwise known as Amok. It was a sit-down at Zodiac Hotel Enugu. Then, I was the reporter of The Guardian in the Coal City.
You know the Amok faith bases its philosophy or belief on the law of Retributive Justice – the law of Karma. That is to say, everything you do in life has its rewards or punishment in equal measure – much like the measure you give, the measure you receive.
I don’t know how much this society draws or links this belief from or with the Bible, but I do recall Jesus Christ warning Simon Peter – return your sword to the scabbard – for he who kills by the sword, dies by the sword.
As a child growing up I listened to one of the epics of Oriental Brothers with the lyrics – ogbu mma ga-esi n’mma na, ogba egbe ga-esi n’egbe na ooo! Translated – he who kills by the sword will die by the sword, he who kills by the gun will die by the nozzle of the gun.
Now, here is where this is relevant in present Nigerian reality – the reason I’m putting details of that encounter out publicly once again, having done so previously.
During that encounter, Idiodi used one event in Nigeria to illustrate his point. He told me of a Nigerian leader who commanded the troop that carried out the Asaba massacre in the heat of the Nigerian civil war – an episode, said to have claimed over 2,000 able-bodied men who had come out to welcome the Nigerian soldiers with songs and dances only to fall in the hail of bullets that descended on them like rainstorms – was not spared by fate.
That commander was to meet his own death in a hail of bullets even as a Head of State. He never mentioned the name of the military top brass. But I used my tongue to count my teeth to come to the answer. You could also do same – use your tongue.
Now, how does this relate? You may have followed the outing of General Yakubu Gowon at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre, Abuja, where he presented his autobiography titled: My Life of Duty and Allegiance, that contained what seemed his memoir on the Nigerian civil war, which he prosecuted as Head of State.
I’m sure you must have been observing the debate therefrom that event. Now, I’m not so much enamoured of the debate as I’m of the nuances surrounding that unfortunate episode and the role of Gowon in it, given my takeaway from that Idiodi encounter some two decades ago.
Does Gowon, now a nonagenarian really believe that presenting a pious, if not saintly account of himself to the world as snippets of his book, which I picked up here and there suggests, truly suffices for the atrocities of that period?
Take the Asaba massacre for example. Was that the handiwork of Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, whom the former Head of State seems to blame for everything that went wrong. Was he also the one that commanded that mass slaughtering of innocent men?
Under your nose as Head of State, you watched citizens slaughtered mercilessly like infested herds in the streets – you watched young girls corralled into leprosy colonies and wantonly raped before being wasted – you watched as train coaches bearing people fleeing the scene were stopped and their human cargoes thrown alive into River Benue like rotten goods for fishes to feast on – you watched all these and didn’t lift a finger.
Then as Head of State, you not only supervised but watched millions of children with distended stomachs, tiny feet, glazy eyes, heavy heads on ropelike necks, practically begging for death to come quickly and save them from further punishment.
You supervised and watched the cataclysmic eruptions from the blitzkrieg on churches, markets and hospitals – all to keep Nigeria together. In your mind the brutal and merciless butchery of innocent people who were not soldiers and had nothing to do with the war could be explained away just like that?
O! It was Ojukwu that caused it. Ojukwu was the one who released the bombs, caused the blockades that led to the kwashiorkor that killed millions or other atrocities thereof? What a pity!
Now, I return to Idiodi. How else could anyone interpret today’s Nigeria without introducing the law of retributive justice that the Amok leader spoke of? How do you fault the link of the commander who massacred over 2,000 souls dying by the barrel of the same gun, even as Head of State?
How could anyone fail to relate what is happening to our Gowon today with the past? This is a Geneal that wakes up to see hundreds of his brothers and sisters being buried in mass graves as was done during the onslaught he supervised against another people and he still thinks it has nothing to do with him?
Now, the story you told at that event in Abuja on Tuesday, is not new. You simply repeated yourself. My interpretation of that event is that you’re a man undergoing daily torture. You wouldn’t be a human being otherwise, given what is before you, which didn’t start today.
You’re probably trying to escape your fate by appealing to public sympathy. How helpful could that be in the face of the clear evidence of your culpability in the deliberate wasting of more than three million souls? Nobody would believe you.
Yes! They could humour you. But that’s the best anyone could do for you. I hear money rained like a fountain and that you left the scene with billions of naira in your kitty. At 90? Haba General!
Now, here is the thing General. None of these would help.
None would work. You have tried prayers. But you forget that the prayer of sinner is an abomination and a reproach before God, unless he repents. You have also written the book. Surely, this too would end up in the trashcan of history – meaningless piece of conjectures, propaganda, half-truths and outright lies – perhaps!
But, why don’t you try the one thing you have been running away from, for more than five decades – go on your knees in total supplication and surrender, repentance and penance – then rise, call all Nigerians and empty yourself with the truth.
Thereafter openly apologise to the millions of souls whose tormenting wailing you probably hear every day during your disturbed sleep and in your quiet moments, but choose to suppress with these baby tales. Ask them for forgiveness, genuinely and see. There may lie the answer you seek.
Try that and see if it wouldn’t be a more efficacious cure for this decades-old wound than this Ojukwu-bashing and those wasted prayer sessions. You might not only have atoned for the past, but saved the future. May God guide you.
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice
By MAX AMUCHIE | The Sunday Stew
In the last two weeks, Parts One and Two diagnosed a structural mutation in the Nigerian state: a dual sovereignty system in which the Institutional Mirage performs authority while the Shadow Order exercises it, sustained by The Insecurity Triad as a mechanism of mutual reproduction.
What remains is the hardest question in political theory: not what is happening, but whether it can be reversed.
The answer is yes—but not through reform.
Systems that reproduce decay cannot be repaired within their own logic. They must be structurally interrupted.
The Trinity does not collapse. It is displaced.
From Ritual Governance to Peripheral Presence
The first reversal targets the geography of illusion.
The Institutional Mirage is concentrated in the symbolic centre—where governance is performed through summits, communiqués, and administrative ceremony—while dissolving at the periphery where authority is actually tested.
This produces a distorted state: visible in Abuja, absent in the borderlands.
To reverse the Trinity, the state must abandon Ritual Governance—the substitution of performance for presence—and return to the empirical occupation of territory.
This is not military occupation. It is administrative presence as sovereignty.
A state exists not when it speaks in the capital, but when:
a child attends a functioning school without paying a parallel tax of fear;
a farmer harvests without negotiating with non-state authority;
a dispute is resolved by a recognised court faster than an armed intermediary.
Governance is not restored by declaration. It is restored by continuity.
Where state presence becomes routine, the Shadow loses its monopoly on predictability.
From Pacification Bargaining to Sovereign Integrity
The second reversal confronts a deeper failure: negotiated sovereignty.
The state has increasingly drifted into a system of Negotiated Sovereignty sustained through what may be described as Pacification Bargaining—the purchase of temporary calm from rival authority structures through ransom logic, amnesty arrangements, protection payments, or informal accommodation.
This is not strategy. It is dependency disguised as pragmatism.
Every bargain strengthens The Insecurity Triad by:
monetising abduction economies;
legitimising territorial extraction;
reinforcing the Shadow’s role as a negotiating sovereign.
The result is a system of self-financing violence in which each concession funds the next cycle of coercion.
Pacification Bargaining does not resolve insecurity. It institutionalises it.
Each transaction deepens the perception that coercion is profitable, territorial pressure is negotiable, and sovereign authority is conditional rather than absolute.
Sovereign recovery therefore requires rupture in this economy.
The state must reassert a non-negotiable monopoly over:
taxation;
adjudication;
legitimate force.
Integrity, in this context, is not moral posture. It is institutional refusal to participate in markets of coercion.
A state that bargains over its coercive authority is not managing insecurity—it is outsourcing sovereignty.
The Critical Break: Dismantling the Insecurity Triad
To dismantle The Insecurity Triad is to break the loop between performed sovereignty and enforced sovereignty.
This cannot be achieved through security operations alone, though coercive force remains an essential and non-negotiable instrument of restoring empirical sovereignty. It requires something deeper: the reconstruction of institutional credibility in the very spaces the Institutional Mirage has abandoned.
It requires the state to stop performing governance and start delivering it. To stop negotiating the terms of its own authority and start enforcing them.
To recover the map—not in abstraction, but in detail: name by name, community by community—that armed actors are actively redrawing through coercion, taxation, and enforced renaming.
Dismantling the Triad is therefore not only a security task. It is a reversal of political geography itself.
The Cartographic Re-occupation of the Republic
The Shadow Order does not only occupy land. It reorganises meaning.
Through what may be understood as Constitutional Erasure, it renames territories, restructures local identity, and replaces the symbolic map through which authority is recognised.
Once this occurs, sovereignty is no longer contested physically alone—it is contested cognitively.
Cartographic Re-occupation is therefore not symbolic politics. It is structural restoration.
It requires three coordinated acts.
First, administrative re-anchoring: the immediate restoration of functioning institutions—schools, clinics, courts, and local administration—under continuous state presence.
Second, symbolic restoration: the reassertion of original geographic and civic identities through formal public renaming and constitutional recognition.
Third, cognitive consolidation: governance must cease to appear as intervention and become the default condition of life.
The state is not restored when it returns to territory. It is restored when territory returns to the state’s cognitive map.
Intellectual Closure: The State After Fragmentation
The deeper insight of this architecture is that sovereignty in Nigeria is no longer singular.
What has emerged is a fragmented order in which authority is distributed between competing logics of governance—one performed, one enforced, both partially functional, neither complete.
This is where African political thought clarifies the structure beneath the surface.
The logic of adaptive survival described by Jean-François Bayart explains why the state persists even as it weakens. Achille Mbembe explains how survival itself becomes managed rather than guaranteed.
Together, they clarify the central claim of the Trinity: this is not collapse. It is reorganisation.
Closing Movement
Nigeria does not face a singular collapse of authority. It faces a structured competition between performed sovereignty and functional sovereignty.
The Mirage still speaks in the language of the state.
The Shadow still governs in the language of necessity.
Between them, society survives by navigating two competing logics of order.
The question is no longer who governs.
It is whether governance itself can be reassembled into a single coherent structure.
The Reversal Condition: Sequential Sovereignty Restoration
The Trinity is reversible, but only in sequence.
Protection must be restored before compliance can shift.
Compliance must shift before territorial credibility stabilises.
Territorial credibility must stabilise before institutional authority can move from performance to function.
Any inversion of this order produces relapse.
The system is not resistant to reform. It is resistant to mis-sequencing.
The Trinity reverses only when sovereignty becomes empirically enforceable again through the sequential reconstitution of protection, compliance, and territorial credibility, thereby disrupting the mutual reproduction loop between the Institutional Mirage and the Shadow Order sustained by The Insecurity Triad.
Where this sequence fails, the loop does not weaken. It adapts.
The Social Contract Is Not Broken — It Is Being Replaced
There can be no social contract in a state where the sovereign performs authority it does not possess, negotiates with rivals it cannot defeat, and watches—from the polished corridors of Abuja—as the names of its own communities are erased from the landscape it claims to govern.
The conventional framing of Nigeria’s crisis describes a broken social contract: the state has failed its obligations, and the people are paying the price.
That framing is not wrong. But it is insufficient.
A broken contract implies a single agreement that has lapsed—and the possibility, in principle, of renegotiation and restoration.
What the Trinity of State Decay reveals is something more structural.
The social contract is not merely broken. It is being replaced.
In the spaces where the Institutional Mirage does not reach—in the northwest, northeast, and Middle Belt, in renamed villages and abandoned farmlands—a rival contract is being written.
On rival terms. Under rival authority. With rival consequences for those who refuse to sign.
The Shadow Order does not offer freedom. It offers a different captivity—one organised around extraction, fear, and the brutal clarity of power that does not pretend to be something it is not.
Within its own logic, it is internally consistent and therefore predictable.
And in conditions where protection becomes uncertain and uneven, predictability itself begins to function as a substitute for legitimacy—not as consent, but as adaptation under constraint.
The Institutional Mirage, by contrast, sustains a different form of instability: the unpredictability of protection, the inconsistency of enforcement, and the performance of authority that does not reliably translate into outcomes.
It is this asymmetry—between predictable coercion and unpredictable protection—that accelerates the silent transfer of compliance from formal sovereignty to rival order.
Conventional state failure frameworks assume a linear erosion of capacity.
The Trinity departs from this by demonstrating a dual-state condition in which formal and rival sovereignties coexist, interact, and reinforce decay.
Nigeria is not a failed state.
It is a state in the grip of a Trinity.
The Definition
Drawing on the full architecture of the foregoing analysis, I now offer a formulation of the Trinity of State Decay theory:
The Trinity of State Decay is the decoupling of a state into rival sovereignties: the Institutional Mirage, which performs authority without fully possessing it, and the Shadow Order—or competing Shadow Orders—which exercises de facto authority in spaces the Mirage has vacated, both sustained by The Insecurity Triad as the mechanism of their mutual reproduction.
The Trinity intensifies where the Mirage fragments into competing centres of performed authority, accelerating the transfer of empirical sovereignty to rival structures.
The Trinity reverses only when sovereignty becomes empirically enforceable again as a stable condition of governance.
This condition is not defined by the mere presence of the state, but by the alignment of three realities: protection must be enforceable, compliance must orient toward the state, and territorial authority must remain continuous.
Where these diverge, sovereignty fragments.
Where they converge, sovereignty reconstitutes.
Recovery is not repair or return. It is the production of a new equilibrium in which the Mirage collapses into function, the Shadow is displaced, and The Insecurity Triad loses its organising role.
This condition is produced through sequence: protection must precede compliance, compliance must precede territorial credibility, and territorial credibility must precede institutional function. Any inversion produces relapse; where the sequence holds, the loop breaks.
While derived from the Nigerian case, the Trinity offers a generalisable framework for analysing state decay in contexts where formal sovereignty persists alongside entrenched systems of rival governance.
Stay seasoned.
•Concluded
•Dr. Max Amuchie is the CEO of Sundiata Post and architect of The Insecurity Triad Analytical Framework, and the Trinity of State Decay theory. He writes The Sunday Stew, a weekly syndicated column on faith, character, and the forces that shape society, with a focus on Nigeria and Africa in a global context.
X — @MaxAmuchie | Email: max.a@sundiatapost.com | Tel: +234(0)8053069436
Godwin Obaseki, former Governor of Edo State was the first to raise the alarm. He rang the bell in the most dramatic manner in that video that went viral on the heels of the 2023 presidential election. It was about the impending tsunami confronting the Nigerian political space – the Peter Obi phenomenon!
The forum the ex-governor spoke was supposed to be a family meeting – a kitchen cabinet affair, where he interacted with the inner caucus of his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in his state. But he ended up not only alerting the nation, but passing the message about the new reality in the must pungent, direct and unobtrusive manner – something new has come – Peter Obi.
Whether it was meant to be a warning, an admonition or simply a subject of amusement – as the governor seemed tickled while delivering it – Obaseki’s words in that outing hit the right spot in national consciousness across board. The young, the old, the healthy and the infirm, all heard it clearly. Now whatever they did individually remains a different kettle of fish.
In that encounter, Obaseki had told his audience how, despite being a governor and the engine room of the PDP in the state, his own family had turned against him with all children and other young members enlisting into the Obidient Movement and how that was true of every other family in Nigeria.
Now, was Obaseki’s depiction false? Didn’t it come to pass on February 25, 2023, when Nigerians went to the polls? If Yakubu Mahmoud and his INEC had not contrived that technical glitches arrangement to abjure the mandate of the people in line with the grab, snatch and run philosophy of the present beneficiary of that obvious heist, Obi certainly would have been Nigerian President.
Had that happened, Obi’s would have been not only a clean and wholesome mandate, untainted by the paintbrush of rigging or other electoral infamies bespattering previous efforts, it would have been a national mandate – delivered by the people of Nigeria – likened only to Moshood Abiola’s June 12, 1993 presidential election victory.
In fact, so pan-Nigerian was the Peter Obi effort that Nigerians of all ethnic and religious persuasions came together and on their own, in clusters, within housing estates, in villages and communities, contributed money to fund their individual campaigns to promote the project of getting him to the Aso Rock Villa for the nation’s number one job.
Nigerians abroad – Yoruba – Hausa – Ibibio – Jukun – Igala – Tiv – Kalabari – Igbo – Edo – made special arrangements to return home with the sole purpose of not only promoting the agenda, but actually making the idea a reality by casting their votes for him.
Obi was the only one out of the lot that contested the election in 2023 that secured the endorsement of virtually all the ethic organisations across Nigeria.
Afenifere – the pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation – the Middle-Belt Forum (MBF) from the North Central – Pan-Niger Delta Forum PANDEF – for the South South region and Ohanaeze – their South East counterpart – all came together to declare their support for his presidential ambition.
Now this is the same person that some naysayers are labouring too hard, day and night to closet inside the straightjacket of ethnicity and religion. From Reno Omokri to Daniel Bwala to Bayo Onanuga and others controlling working from the Presidency to their counterparts at the Blantyre Plaza APC secretariat in Abuja – they continue to trumpet the spurious, bogus and fake narrative of Obi’s ambition being steeped in some sort of Igbo agenda.
Ironically, out of the entire lot, the selfsame Obi, is the only one who came out to boldly declare that nobody should cast a vote for him because he is Igbo, rather, they should do so because they are convinced about his ability to deliver on a new Nigeria of their dreams. No other had the courage to make such a bold declaration.
Surprisingly, even Wole Soyinka, one of Nigeria’s most iconic figures – a central voice in national and international affairs – Nigeria’s man of the century – the Kongi himself – who had hitherto shot himself to a position of a super being – of immortality – beyond reproach – without any credible reason even by his own conjecture – called the Obi ambition – an IPOB agenda.
That underscores the seriousness of the entire scenario. But interestingly, no matter how they try to trumpet it, their efforts have continued to mimic a snake striking at the shell of the tortoise with the aim of infusing its killer poison.
Their frustration not only hinges on this apparent failure but their current desperation too! The Obi brand has continued to soar beyond comprehension. So, when you hear the echoes of ethnic baiting, religious smears or other primordial sentiments, just know they are trying to increase the tempo of the din! Such a frustrating task!
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!
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