Columns
Dangote’s travails: Tinubu must know the world is watching
By Sunny Igboanugo
Yet again, the din is reverberating. The echoes could be heard here and yonder and the world is listening, sure to engage in another baleful of laughter from the odious entertainment, coming from the usual source – Africa – nay, Nigeria!
Or haven’t you heard? Dangote, until recently, Africa’s richest man and definitely Nigeria’s most celebrated business icon is in the news. He is currently under the radar of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Of course, you know how it is with this Nigerian ubiquitous anti-graft agency – whosoever is on its spotlight, suddenly becomes a public subject. So, it is no surprising that Dangote is Nigeria’s biggest conversation now.
I have just read the details of the latest encounter and the exchanges thereto between the two. Immediately I did, the first reaction was to shake my head and repeat those eternal words by French writer and journalist, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, who wrote in 1849, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose “ – the more things change, the more they stay the same!Or what do you think has changed since the founding of the EFCC in 2002?
What do you think is different from the EFCC of yesterday and that of today, given the current unfolding drama? To boot, what do you think would come out of the macabre dance in the end? When you hear what Nigerians derisively dismiss as initial gragra, no other organisation in Nigeria fits better into the description than EFCC. Just like Shakespeare’s depiction of a tale told by an idiot – all sound and fury, signifying nothing.
The only difference here is that the EFCC men do not seem to be fools, but wise men adept at their game and well nuanced with their environment.Right from its first Chairman, Nuhu Ribadu, the commission has been known for being plenty on words and scanty on action in terms of actually catching and nailing the thieves they were supposed to go after – always frantically doing something to give the impression of working, but in the end achieving very little.
Even worse still, contrary and ironically too, the leadership of the selfsame body, are often caught bed with the same men and women who they misslabelled yesterday. They also on many occasions become the hunted themselves from being the hunter. Ribadu! O Ribadu! Remember him? He came calling everyone a thief. His stories were so enchanting that Nigerians salivated profusely like Pavlov dogs each time he appeared on the scene to tell them.
Recall that tale about how he rejected the $5million offered him by James Ibori, former Delta State Governor in that epic drama? I’m sure you haven’t forgotten another classic outing in the Senate in September, 2006, when he regaled the men of the upper legislative chamber of the National Assembly, and through them, Nigerians and the world of how five then serving governors – Orji Uzor Kalu of Abia, Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Lagos, Ahmed Sani Yerima of Zamfara, George Akume of Benue and Abdullahi Adamu of Nasarawa, were under his radar as well as doyens or babanlas of corruption. It was actually there that he made the infamous declaration that Tinubu’s crimes were of international dimension.
To emphasise that his declaration at the Senate was not a slip of the tongue, he was quoted by reporters a few months later, in 2007 to have said: “Tinubu and the rest should consider themselves very lucky… they ought to have been where Dariye, Fayose, and Alemieyeseigha are today. They cannot escape. It is a matter of time. They have the protection of the law. They enjoy immunity. We are after them because they still want to rule us again. The constitution is against indicted people. After their tenure, they will be prosecuted. They remain indicted and are not fit to hold public positions.”
But what happened thereafter, when a Pharaoh that didn’t know Joseph in the name of Umaru Yar’Adua appeared on the scene? The same Ribadu became the hunted himself. For the period the former President was in power before succumbing to ill-health in 2010, Ribadu was actually on the run – a fugitive from Nigeria. It took the camp of the same Tinubu he vilified to give him some cover.
In no time, after the death of Yar’Adua, he was to return to the country to pick the ticket of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) founded by the same Tinubu to contest the presidential election of the following year. Today, the same Ribadu is working for the same Tinubu – the man, whose crime had international dimension. See how e dey go? What an irony.
But of course, that is the character of the EFCC. In fact, as time went by, the same Ribadu took several opportunities to deny that he said Tinubu was under investigation. Imagine! He actually looked Nigerians in the face with cameras beaming to his face and the entire world watching during one of his outings in his run for the presidency to do so?
Was Farida Waziri, who replaced him any better? From her appointment in May 2008 to her disgraceful ouster in November 2011 by then President Goodluck Jonathan, was she equally not dogged with the same allegations of the barber’s chair – all motion, no movement selective prosecution, accentuated by media trial of suspects?
In fact, the only significant conviction she secured was the 30-month jail term slammed on Bode George, former National Vice Chairman (South) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Even this did not endure, as the Supreme Court, on December 13, 2013, quashed the conviction, by a Lagos High Court, by discharging and acquitting the ex-PDP boss, saying the EFCC had no evidence that he had intention to commit fraud at the Nigeria Port Authority (NPA) where as chairman he was caught presiding over a contract bazaar that led to his ordeal.
Ironically, for a long time after her exit the former EFCC boss, the first female to head the organisation, remained in the public glare as speculations rose and fell over her fate. In fact, in one report, which was later denied, it was said that she was actually under investigation by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Offences Commission (ICPC).
Ibrahim Lamorde, her replacement, did not smell roses either even with his own long lists of cases, which ended up nowhere despite the media noise accompanying them. In fact, Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions, chaired by Samuel Anyanwu (APC-Imo East), on Thursday February 25, 2016, sought for an arrest warrant against the former EFCC boss over allegation by one George Uboh Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Public Alert Security Systems, that he tampered with the N1 trillion of assets recovered by the anti-graft agency during his time as the director of operations and later chairman.
His defence however was that the Senate was after him in the wake of the EFCC’s investigation of Toyin Saraki, wife of then Senate President, Bukola Saraki, over allegations of graft while her husband was the governor of Kwara State between 2003 and 2011.
Is it Ibrahim Magu? His own case was even more entertaining and intriguing, if not completely outlandish. It was an era of catches of currencies – foreign and local being discovered in abandoned buildings, sewage tanks, burial grounds or practically rolling out from the conveyor belts at different airports. Perplexingly, no one was ever linked to these monies outside the generic – corrupt individuals.
How did the same Magu end up? On July 6, 2020, the news broke of how the same anti-corruption czar was whisked away by security operatives straight to the Presidential Villa to answer multiple queries on issues of monumental corruption and abuse of office – the same Magu, who was everywhere boasting about how he was going to get every corrupt official under lock and key and dismissing all the four fingers pointing back at him as – corruption fighting back. Phew!
It is in this context that the present case of Dangote versus EFCC must be situated. Why? Why not? The entire development mimics previous episodes. Olu Olukayode, the new man named for the position by President Bola Tinubu, in October last year, had presented the mien of a man that would take a different route.
In fact, having been the Head of Operations at the commission, and a lawyer to boot, one of the expectations was that he understood the flaws of the agency and would therefore avoid the pitfalls, principal of which is – noise! But with this Dangote case, it seems he has failed the first major test?
How come this case is all over the place in the media? In the last 48 hours or so, the pages of major newspapers had been plastered with screaming headlines of how the EFCC invaded the company’s headquarters in Lagos “in search of documents.” Haba! Must it be so? What stops the agency from quietly stealing into the company to seek the documents in question?
The picture the public gets is that in many cases, the EFCC due to its pattern of putting the carts before the horse it comes out ill-prepared such that a smart Alec of a lawyer makes mincemeat of the usually watery cases it presents, only for it to blame the judiciary in the end.
For a man like Dangote, with the resources to buy the best lawyer in Nigeria and elsewhere, could it afford to adopt this pattern that has failed over and over before? Unfortunately, it seems so?
Sunday Esan, spokesman, who gave the details of the operation, said the company had gone to the EFCC office with the same document they sought, while its personnel were storming their office, wondering the basis for the show.
Hear him: “On 4 January 2024, our team delivered the first batch of documents to the EFCC. However, officers of the EFCC did not accept the documents, insisting on visiting our offices to collect the same set of documents directly. Whilst our representatives were still at the EFCC’s office to deliver the documents, a team of their officers proceeded to visit our offices to demand the same documents in a manner that appeared designed to cause us unwarranted embarrassment. Worthy of note is the fact that the officials did not take any documents or files from our Head office during their visit as these were already in their office.
“We must emphasise that, to our knowledge, no accusations of wrongdoing have been made against any company within our Group. At present, we are only responding to a request for information to assist the EFCC with their ongoing investigation.”
But the commission seems unfazed, apparently. In a report The Nation, quoted its operatives as saying: “We demanded for some vital documents but Dangote Group was not forthcoming. As an anti-graft agency, EFCC will not join issues with Dangote Group but Nigerians should wait for the outcome of the ongoing investigation. No one or group can impede or delay investigation. We cannot be deterred, we will get to the roots of the forex allocations in 10 years.”
It is up to you, compatriots to choose what or who to believe. My only worry here is the noise. We’re not just talking about anybody here, but Dangote. No matter how you view it, there is a vantage place for him in the history of Nigeria, in fact, its whole essence at this time. Take it or leave it, he is a national asset and big Nigerian brand.
We have already started hearing the sordid story that the EFCC is after him because he did not support President Tinubu during the last election and therefore, the operation has nothing to do with the Forex issue. Sounds familiar? That indeed will by not only a calamity, but great tragedy. For the world is watching!
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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