Columns
Demolition of Computer Village: Facts Ndigbo must know
By Sunny Igboanugo
The squad was said to have arrived in the wee-hours of Saturday, December 30 and worked till Sunday morning. By the time the bulldozers they brought along with them pulled out in the afternoon of the same day, the Police Officers Wives Association (POWA) plaza at the Computer Village in Lagos, had become mere rubbles. Mission accomplished.
Soon, the videos started flying around, showing shop owners rummaging through the ruins to see what they could pick up. But nothing of any value could be found. In fact, in one of the videos, one voice, which described the onslaught as “politics” was heard saying that those who carried out the demolition took time to break into the shops to cart away the valuables.
It would take an imbecile, someone without any sense of value or monks in the monastery without any interest in worldly affairs to ignore the content of those shops – hi-tech equipment, latest i-phones, laptops, air conditioning systems, inverters, solar panels, anti-burglary systems and all – reportedly carted away before the bulldozers moved in. At least, that was the claim from some of the traders.
Were this claim true, that would, for me, be the better, commendable part of the story, because it would mean that at least, a new set of millionaires would emerge, because it would also mean that those who removed them could re-sell them to new buyers, even at half the prices or even as giveaways and thus be put to use rather than crushing them totally.
Yes! Picture it! Contemplate in your mind a situation where those costly goods went down in the rubbles, what could have been lost. Assuming for instance that those items were not removed before the demolition, what quantum of damage in terms of cost? Do you know the cost of one i-phone for instance?
Last week, I was in one of such shops at Shoprite in Lagos and saw that the I-pad we used to buy for about N300,000 is now N1.5million. Assume that in one shop alone, you had five copies of N1.5milllion worth of i-phones. Multiply that by the over 1,000 shops that were reportedly destroyed. How much does it come to?
Yet, these are shops that did not have just five copies, but cartons of these items. Imagine the cost of inverter batteries alone or solar panels – cartons of them – what do they amount to in terms of cost? Would you be talking about millions, billions or trillions of Naira? What is the total amount of Lagos State budget for 2024? Picture it, my dear compatriots. You see why it would be a patriotic duty to steal rather than destroy them? But that’s just a part of the story.
Again, picture another aspect – the timing. Ostensibly, they were quite deliberate about it. They chose very well. They waited until most of the shop owners were probably out of reach. Most of them had actually travelled for Christmas before they struck. That was when they delivered their 24-hour notice. How ingenious? For people who are as far from Lagos as Izzi in Ebonyi State or Ikom in Cross River or Kaura Namode in Zamfara?
Now, the Lagos State Government, has washed its hands and feet of the matter, like Pontus Pilate did in the case of Jesus Christ. Hear Gbenga Omotoso, Commissioner for Information, on the matter: “Those circulating the fake news are opportunistic ethnic chauvinists who will always relish in vacuous propaganda that can fuel their fiendish mission; they will always fail in dividing Lagosians.” Really?
Okay, accepted that this is so, the next question is which government in the whole world would watch such a monumental destruction of goods belonging to citizens they profess to love and wish not to be divided? In which other country of the world outside Ukraine, Palestine or Yemen – countries officially at war or failed states like Somalia, would such monumental waste be permitted?
If indeed the government was not involved, what were they supposed to do? Again, how much is the total budget of the state that it would permit such destruction of an economic beehive with capacity of contributing a handsome quantum of revenue as could be generated from that plaza either directly from tax by their owners or vicariously through the multiplier effects from those doing business with them including millions they employ directly and indirectly?
Is the government saying that POWA could have carried out such monumental destruction if the government did not permit it or truly cared about those traders or the owners of the goods? Certainly no! A caring, responsible government, would have moved in to see how to salvage the situation.
Hear the reason for the demolition from the police authorities: “It has become imperative to properly establish that the complex, a property of the Nigeria Police Officer’s Wives Association, which is officially allocated to wives of Police Officers and their relatives, has been scheduled for demolition to enable the Force commence immediate construction of a modern shopping complex on the same land.
“The decision to demolish and reconstruct is predicated on the fact that professional opinion indicate that the structure as it is constitutes a looming environmental hazard, as the site is prone to flood, and may be susceptible to sudden collapse, hence the need for immediate landscaping and reconstruction. The planned demolition and reconstruction will be in phases and is in good faith for the betterment of all concerned, Olumuyiwa Adejobi, spokesman of the Nigerian Police Force (NPF), had offered in a statement on Saturday, hours before the bulldozers moved in.
Imagine! First, it was to make way for the police authorities to construct “a modern shopping complex” and because it “constitutes a looming environmental hazard, as the site is prone to flood, and may be susceptible to sudden collapse, hence the need for immediate landscaping and reconstruction.”
Does it not sound laughable? What it means is that the plaza was put up in the first place, either without due diligence, integrity test or Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), that it now requires to go down at such a huge cost. What a story! Pray! What is a responsible and responsive government, intent on protecting its people supposed to do in a situation like this?
Okay, since the fear is flooding, is it not apposite to expect that the worst fears are over for now that we’re in the dry season and that the government, could at least have negotiated that for time enough for the shop owners to return from holidays before the demolition is carried out or does flood happen in December in Nigeria? But no story is too funny to hear in Nigeria. No tale is too obtuse or infantile to tell.
Of course, it is people that have this sort of expectation or ask questions like these that Omotoso, my fellow graduate at Rutam House, The Guardian, where the inscription – Conscience Nurtured by Truth, is the first thing that confronts you right at the gate, wantonly and gratuitously describe as ethnic chauvinists. How sad! How truly sad indeed!
Clearly, Omotoso needs not speak in euphemism. Even children still suckling their mother’s breasts knows that he’s referring to Ndigbo. They are the ones mostly affected. More than 80 per cent of those shops belong to them. After all how and when did such demolition become such a fad in the state? Was it not after the same people were threatened with fire and brimstone for daring to vote their choice in the 2023 general elections?
Assuming that they had no hand in the last offensive, who taught the police that it was possible to unleash such monumental offensive against individual and collective wealth on a people if not the selfsame government in Lagos that supervised the onslaught at Alaba International Market shortly after the election?
Without Alaba, where goods and structures worth billions were destroyed, there wouldn’t have been Abule-Ado with a similar experience before Computer Village. Naturally, there is no telling that this would be the last. More buildings will definitely go down as Ndigbo reel through their current harrowing experience in not only in the hands of Lagos government, but the nation at large.
But each time I reflect on the situation and contemplate the mindset of those behind these actions and the reasons driving them, especially those boasting and gloating about it, I never fail to shake my head about the futility of the eventual outcome.
How much can you really do to destroy a man whom God has not destroyed? How far can you really go? Despite the 20 pounds handed over to them immediately after the war, could anyone say that Ndigbo are worse off than other Nigerians who had everything at their beck and call at that time? Who really are the new owners of properties in Port Harcourt and Rivers State, where their homes were seized from them? How those who engage in this offensive against Ndigbo could not read that it is a wasted effort beats me.
Indeed what is the crime they have committed in Lagos outside exhibiting their nature of free spirit to decide on their own? Do their current traducers believe that an Igbo man could really be whipped into line in the manner they’re pursuing the project, when three years of hailstones blitzkrieg and bombardment that led to the killing of more than two million of their brothers and sisters failed to achieve that?
If only they knew? Do the people pushing this arduous project to intimidate Ndigbo in Lagos not know that a father cannot force his son to vote a particular candidate, neither could a husband, the wife? Are they not aware that one Samuel Gumsu (SG) Ikoku of Action Group (AG) of Obafemi Awolowo, actually contested against his own father Alvan Ikoku of United National Independent Party (UNIP), defeated him in Igboland and lived after to eat in the same plate with the father? By the way, image of the older is on the N10 note, apart from the Alvan Ikoku College of Education, now a university, named after him.
Ok. What if you manage to intimidate the shop owners, some of them, whom by the way, are close to the corridors of power, what about those apprentices that run errands and hustle for them? Do you think that their bosses could direct them on where to vote during elections? No! So, the basic truth which everyone has to hear is that the project has failed. It failed even before it started.
The mistake anyone would make is to accept the accompanying narrative they’re trying to push through that this is about Igbo and Yoruba, rather than what it actually is – the agenda of the APC to remain in office anyways, whichever ways. Which rivalry would be greater than that between Zik and Awolowo? Yet, under the UPN of Awo, every Igbo child in Lagos, went to school free just like their Yoruba counterparts.
Many Igbo residents became landlords by buying the Jakande houses, where many of them or their children still live today, without having to know anyone, outside simply being lucky enough to win the balloting through which they were allocated, just like other residents in Lagos.
Nobody ever heard the odious refrain of Ndigbo wanting to take over Lagos. Yes, nobody did for one singular reason. Baba kekere, could simply go to bed the whole of election period and wake up the next day after balloting to pick up more than 80 per cent of the votes for the simple reason of being at home with the people.
Why wouldn’t he? In and out of office, the only luxury attached to his name was his ubiquitous Datsun Laurel and his personal living house at Ilupeju. Even his daily breakfast of moi-moi and ogi, was so popular that it became an open knowledge to every Lagosian.
Compare that simple, detached lifestyle to the prodigal profligacy, licentiousness and open gluttony associated to his successors, especially under the APC regime. Then, you’ll understand why a Jakande would donate vast areas of land for the development of the Alaba International Market, just to open up Lagos to investments and why his counterparts in APC, would demolish prime buildings in the same market, to achieve the direct opposite.
If you’re still at sea, it was the selfsame Jakande that declared Lagos a no-man’s land and for good reason. Today that statement he made to lobby other Nigerians to join in developing the city like its counterparts across the world, is now being turned on its head to achieve other negative ends all because of bad politics.
Don’t ask me how long this will last, because I don’t know. But one sure thing is that it won’t last forever. If the reign of impunity of the PDP could end so abruptly, if Nigeria could survive the horrible era of Abacha, then this tempest too will pass! That I’m sure of.
My name is Sunny Igboanugo and 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!
“This is Lagos!”
How many of you have seen this sign that introduces you into Lagos? Whoever coined that expression is highly ingenious because the essence of those three words ensconces a lot within its bowels.
It could mean that Lagos is a land of opportunities, where a man who started off as a truck loader at Iddo Motor Park, could discover opportunities to become the next billionaire around. There is a surfeit of examples.
It could also be introducing you to Nigeria’s Centre of Excellence and the pride of the nation where high-stake activities from the signing of multi-billion-dollar transactions conducted in the penthouses of Ikoyi and Victoria Island and the beautiful ambiances of the Victoria Garden City (VGC), Lekki, Banana Island and other high-brow places mimic other big cities across the globe.
Yet, it could also be a warning to the new entrants to the fact that Lagos is not for the faint-hearted, the indolent and imprudent. In other words, Lagos is not a place to loose-guard, as it is said in the local parlance, but a city where street-wisdom is as important as existence itself being the major factor and fine line between success and failure.
For me, the third example is the most relevant and essential here, because it is quite germane to the matter at hand – the current political scenario in Nigeria – regarding Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar. Obi’s defection from the African Democratic Congress (ADC) to the Nigerian Democratic Congress (NDC), is a demonstrable example of street-wisdom at play and an emphatic message of its potency!
Since Sunday when it came to the fore that Obi had dumped the ADC and moved to the new party alongside Rabiu Kwankwaso, his new-found ally, the Atiku camp has remained on the offensive, raising the battle-cry – BETRAYAL!
They say Obi abandoning the ADC ship and porting to the NDC represents a betrayal of not only Atiku and the coalition arrangement but the battle to end the calamitous governance President Bola Tinubu – its main goal. How laughable!
Dino Melaye – Obi detests the heat of a kitchen and prefers an air-conditioned one. If he couldn’t face party primaries, having not participated in any right from his APGA days, how would he face the presidential election?
Dele Momodu – I would have wished that Obi would have waited to test his popularity in ADC…Obi did not leave because of Atiku, he left because he knew he lacked the capacity to take on Atiku.”
Even Babachir Lawal – a hitherto Obi supporter, fired his own arrow – Obi is shifty! A politician who fears elections, have no business being one. He doesn’t want to participate in primaries. He prefers a consensus candidate and that consensus must be him!
All the well-choreographed mantra, you hear from these guys, bespeak more of lamentations at missed plot to capture Obi into Atiku’s inextricable ADC web than reality of Obi lacking the sturdiness, durability and gusto to face tough battles.
In fact, Obi has nothing to prove in terms of his ability to fight. He proved this in the 2023. So by this outing alone the pale, trembling coward image they’re trying to sell to the world through this desperate narrative, falls flat on its face. But there’s more!
Talking about battles and the heat of the kitchen, this was the same Obi that stood through the courts to snatch his stolen mandate after it was snatched by the hounds in the 2003 governorship elections in his home Anambra.
This was the same Obi that sacked Chris Ngige in 2006 to retrieve his mandate and Andy Uba in 2027 in the tenure interpretation case – two seating governors in a space of one year. Who else has achieved this? This was the same Obi, who fought and returned to office after he was impeached from office as a governor.
Isn’t it laughable that it is the same man they claim is afraid to fight? What Obi is afraid of is his name being soiled in any way. It was for the reason of maintaining a clean name that he would rather yield to the pain of impeachment than offer bribes to the members of then Anambra State House of Assembly to spare his job.
Obi simply showed the hounds in ADC the import of that inscription – This is Lagos. It showed how much he understood its implication in terms of street-wisdom. How could Atiku and his men believe they could outwit Obi in that manner?
It’s like urging Ishi-Udene, my village dibia to sit at a beautiful table underneath which you buried a drum of boiling oil. He would have seen the danger in his divinity pot long before you concluded the plot.
Obi, fighting for the ADC ticket is akin to that dapper-looking bank manager, decked in designer suits, alighting from his sleek automobile and engaging those red-eyed, broken-tooted, scared faces at Mushin, Agege or Ajegunle bus stops, just to prove his toughness. What’s the use?
Now, picture this! You ran into a crowd and out of curiosity, went to observe, only to discover your spouse, clothes off, drenched in mud, broken bottles in hand, in roforofo fight at Oshodi bus stop!
Would you excuse your spouse even if provoked into that fight or celebrate the outcome, assuming the opponent was beaten to a pulp and taught a lesson?
For Peter Obi to engage in the ADC battle, it would not only take energy and sweat, it would certainly take away INTEGRITY and CREDIBILITY – the two elements that give essence to the Obi brand.
That would mean committing suicide to polish an ego. That is foolhardiness! The last time I checked, recklessness is the opposite of wisdom. And Peter Gregory Obi is not foolish. He’s a wise man!
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!
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