Columns

Can Tinubu release Kanu without appeasing Buhari?

Published

2 years ago

June 25, 2024

By Sunny Igboanugo

On Sunday, June 23, 2024, about 50 members of the House of Representatives wrote a passionate letter to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, with one request – the release of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, the Leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB).

“Your Excellency, we are concerned members of the House of Representatives of the Federal Republic of Nigeria with a strong belief and trust that the Renewed Hope agenda and the various positive reforms would be seen and felt by all.

“It is against this backdrop that we, the undersigned, hereby beseech Your Excellency to direct the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Prince Lateef Fagbemi SAN, to invoke his powers of nolle prosequi under the provisions of Section 174(1) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended) and Section 107(1) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015, and cause the release of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu from detention and discontinue his trial.

“We collectively believe this is long overdue and would be instrumental in opening the door for much-needed conversations surrounding peace reformation and inclusivity, as well as addressing the issues that led to the agitations, especially at this time when Nigeria is going through several constitutional reforms,” they wrote.

Quite significant as it might seem, assuming it is not another political move in itself to hoodwink unsuspecting Nigerians, my take is that the lawmakers are in the wrong place. Instead of Tinubu, their destination should be Daura, in Katsina State. They should be talking to Muhammadu Buhari, the President’s predecessor. He is the one that has a problem with Kanu, not Tinubu.

Since the last appearance of the IPOB leader in court, there has been this report that he has opted for out of court settlement, which some people see as capitulation and begging. I don’t know to what extent this could be valid. But assuming, but not conceding that this were so, then even Kanu and his team, have also missed the road. It means that they have no knowledge of where the rain started beating them and where it will eventually stop. Certainly, it will neither be in Lagos or Abuja. Destination is Daura, Katsina State.

Indeed, if there is any way to pull Kanu out of his current abode in the gulag of the Department of State Services (DSS), take him to Daura, and make him lie prostrate and clean Buhari’s feet with his tears in utter supplication for mercy in a manner that could create a thaw in the former Military General’s frosty and stony heart, that should be the clincher. Anything else would be akin to misfiring. Tons of letters to Tinubu and, or, any other manner of rapprochement move to or with Abuja, will not work.

That is my current reading of the situation. There is no way Tinubu would order the release of Kanu without offending Buhari. It is only when he is ready to damn the consequences of being at a crossroads with Buhari that he could take such audacious step. Trying to spring the IPOB boss out of his current situation without first appeasing Buhari, would be akin to knocking their heads together.

The current moves by the lawmakers, which, surprisingly, but perhaps understandably, does not have anyone from the South West among them, from the list of 44 names I saw, can not be more potent than similar ones embarked by South East leaders, including Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the pan-Ndigbo socio-cultural organisation and the apex decision-making body of the Igbo people.

If Tinubu, was ready to rebuff the highest authority in Igboland, which could be interpreted as a big snub on the entire ethnic group that is the third leg of the Nigerian tripod, what is a group of 50 people? But he has evidently shown that he is ready to commit that political hara-kiri for obvious reasons.

The lawmakers might do well to find out from the ex-President how much Nigeria must have shelled out from the commonwealth to conduct such a high-octane operation that successfully brought Kanu back from Kenya. They might be surprised that the dent the operation made in the national till, might have contributed to the parlous situation of the entire economy Nigeria is presently contending with. I won’t doubt it if I heard that he practically opened the vault of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to achieve the feat.

Better still, if Buhari is too far to reach, Asari Dokubo, could be another option. He has been high on gloating in recent days, and has made a video to emphasise how he has fulfilled his promise of putting Kanu away. Remember how he told the world last year after his symbolic visit to Tinubu in Abuja, that he signed a military contract with Buhari. Obviously, the capture of Kanu, must have been part of the deal. An idea of how much he was paid for the job, could be another way of ascertaining what the Kenya operation cost Buhari and his government.

Surely, with his current mood, where he is mocking the IPOB boss – for begging and reducing himself to a mere puppy, and especially regarding his propensity for flippancy, he might just be too willing to spill the beans. After all, was he not the one recently listing his assets including choice houses across the globe and some of the most exotic automobiles from the factories of western nations to prove how stupendously rich he is? Certainly, that military deal done in darkness, could have contributed substantially as a veritable source for the acquisition of such assets.

But that is just one entity. On Tuesday, July 29, 2021, Abubakar Malami, former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice (AGF-MoJ), had in a joint media interaction with the leadership of the DSS, announced that the arrest and return of Kanu, from the East African country, was through what he described as “international collaborative effort.”

That statement could also help anyone to add up the cost. Add top officials of the Kenyan government, add to the middle and lower officials, add to the security and others in the international chain including the informants and those who tricked Kanu into Kenya, before the Nigerian boys that all worked to ensure the operation was successful this time. That would give anyone the idea of what must have gone into the operation.

Recall that Buhari, had attempted a similar operation as Military Head of State, when he tried to bring back the late Umaru Dikko in a crate from the UK. It was a mission that failed at the last second. He must have put extra effort and extra funding to ensure that the Kanu mission, was not only top notch, but a full success this time around.

Just imagine how ecstatic he would have been the day he saw Kanu in handcuffs and the alluring feeling of waking up every morning from the Villa in those days to realise that he was still cooling his heels in the dark dungeon of the DSS. It is obvious that even today in Daura, one of the first things he would do each morning would be to run a check through the channels to ascertain that the situation has not changed. Imagine the kick he would be getting from Igbo leaders falling over themselves on bended knees to beg him to free Kanu – something that was denied him some 50 years ago with Dikko.

In the first place, Dikko, did not do half of what the IPOB leader did. Not even a quarter. Dikko did not declare him dead. Dikko did not call him Jubril of Sudan. Kanu did all that. Yet, he went after the ex-NPN big wig. What he was denied decades ago by the eagle eyes of the British security is handed to him on a platter and someone wants him to throw it away. How possible.

It would even have been more manageable were it another person. Any other broad-minded leader, would have let Kanu’s obvious slight, slide, especially when they are at best, what the Igbo call, cannons fired with the mouth, which have no real effect or poses any threat to anyone, particularly when they are only part of political disputations. Agitators all over the world use heavy words to draw attention to themselves and that is what Kanu seems guilty of.

But it is not Buhari to ignore such and certainly not in this situation. He takes it to heart. To him it is a personal fight – a personal war. Don’t forget that Kanu is an Igbo man – a dot in the circle – the 97-5 per cent – the group of Nigerians Buhari never wanted to have anything to do with – who probably needed not have existed on the surface of the earth were he to have the chance.

I have always argued that Tinubu’s sudden antagonistic attitude towards Ndigbo was influenced by Buhari. Apart from being naturally open and receptive to all, Tinubu, as Governor of Lagos State, actually threw his doors open for the Igbo people, both in Lagos and elsewhere, surrounding himself with his Igbo friends, all which disappeared since his Buhari contact in the All Progressives Congress (APC) political marriage.

Nobody needed to be told that one of the criteria to be friends with Buhari is to hate the Igbo. It is one of the ways to make him happy. So, even as President, Tinubu knows that to turn around and embrace the Igbo, even if he desired it, was the surest means of losing Buhari’s friendship. In the 2023 presidential campaign, he almost ignored Ndigbo completely and only managed to visit few places. That obviously would have increased his place in Buhari’s heart to enable him break the door with impunity to ensure that the Presidency was his.

When he pledged to continue with Buhari’s legacies, keeping Ndigbo as far away as possible from the leadership of the APC and from government appointments, must certainly be part of it. In fact, something tells me that for as long as Ndigbo are never given a pride of place in Tinubu’s reckoning, Tinubu could go ahead and do as he wishes. Buhari would not be too perturbed with the President upping the ante in the manner he has since filled virtually every federal position with his Yoruba people.

So, yes! The lawmakers are right in their assertion. There are more than a thousand ways of officially freeing Kanu, except for one glitch – the Buhari factor! Ordinarily a typical open-minded politician like Tinubu would have let all the supposed sins Kanu committed against Buhari ride were he the one involved.

For instance, the hollow ritual on June 12, 2024 in the name of Democracy Day, in Abuja, could have been given a strong impetus as a national event, if Tinubu had announced the release of Kanu. It would have shown that he was ready to shelve the vengeance mentality that saw the late military despot, Sani Abacha ignore all pleadings including the Catholic Pontiff, the Pope and other global leaders to keep the late Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (MKO) Abiola in detention, until providence intervened to solve the problem.

Such a gesture would have been more meaningful and more nationally rewarding than banal, insipid and totally empty speech that preceded the fanfare at the Eagle Square. It would have shown a certain semblance to Abiola’s robust politics and open mind, which would have done much good to his memory than unveiling a giant painting of himself on that occasion, which further took away the shine.

Most certainly, the report of the entire event would not have been eclipsed by his tripping and falling, which the Nigerian media and their foreign counterparts gleefully feasted on, because the Kanu story would have attracted more attention.

But certainly not with the Buhari factor dangling around like the sword of Damocles. An Igbo! Except Femi Fani-Kayode was lying in that revelation of his encounter with the former President, no one should be left in doubt about the obvious. The former Minister of Aviation, had explained that he had never seen the type of hatred and anger against a people as Buhari expressed against Ndigbo for “killing our leaders.”

So, this account must not be lost on the lawmakers or anyone indeed, who might wish to dabble into the Kanu issue. Though the civil war has ended some 53 years ago, Buhari is still at it. Kanu and the numerous acts of malevolence of Buhari towards the Igbo, which were clearly evident in his eight years in power, were demonstrable examples. It is up to G-50 to contend with the situation. But I still maintain that going to Tinubu is the wrong route.

Indeed, if the passage of time of about six decades could not wipe off Buhari’s memory of the January 15, 1966 coup incident, if the wiping off of scores of Igbo military officers, if the blood of millions of Ndigbo killed in the several pogroms that followed or millions of others wiped out during the civil war proper are not enough to quench Buhari’s thirst for vengeance against Ndigbo, I wonder how far the G-50 could even go should they toe this line.

Yes! The lawmakers are equally right that there are many reasons the release of Kanu would impact positively on Tinubu and indeed Nigerian as a whole. They are right to believe, for one that it would address the current security crisis in the South East and clear the air about the nebulous atmosphere in the area. Today, every crime in the zone is linked to IPOB. Even the usual armed robbery and burglary seem not exist anymore. They are now grouped as IPOB. Nobody seems to be thinking outside the box as IPOB presents a ready answer. Of course, Kanu’s continued detention, remains a good cover for this to endure.

It is not that anyone is trying to dissuade the lawmakers. My take is to advert their minds to the other side of the argument. Who knows? They might just succeed in scraping the scales of Tinubu’s eyes. He might one day decide to take the bull by the horns. He might decide to address the South East question.

He might realise that inheriting Buhari’s enmity with the Igbo might not be the best way after all and make a detour. That will be the day he will tell himself that keeping Kanu in detention while the likes of Sunday Igboho, Yoruba nation agitator, accused of similar crime is breathing the air of freedom is bad for national health, as it bespeaks of nothing else but unfairness, if not outright hypocrisy.

Perhaps, someone might remind him that now Buhari is out of the way, the implication of a Bello Bodejo, leader of the Myetti Allah Kautal Kore, who was recently arrested and charged for terrorism, strolling the streets a free man, while Kanu is in the DSS gulag, would no longer be a Buhari issue but would be traced to him at the end of the day, especially if anything happens to him.

He might just realise that the gains of releasing the IPOB leader, would certainly be more than the pains of giving political offence to one man, for the simple reason that with that move, he would have allowed the people of the South East breathe some fresh air for once in a long time and they might not forget it in a hurry.

Maybe, by then he would realise the need to extricate himself and severe the bond that has put him at the centre of a war he did not create and from which he would hardly benefit anything positive. That may be the push for him to do the needful. But until then, efforts of the G-50 and those that might come after, will remain the same – wasted!

My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!

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Columns

The Three-Month Sprint (1): Philosophical Architecture of an Intellectual Trilogy of State Decay

Published

3 days ago

June 14, 2026

Whirlwindnews

Last week on The Sunday Stew, we unveiled the Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI), a quantitative metric I developed as an extension of the Trinity of State Decay. It is meant to be a mathematical instrument for measuring the degree of separation between a state’s juridical sovereignty and its lived reality. I had planned to follow up today with the first instalment of a three-part series on the methodology and indicators of the DSI.

Then, from the middle of last week, there was a development that sent me into a sustained period of reflection.

On Wednesday, Zenodo — the open-access repository developed by CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, and the European Commission — published my 16,315-word theoretical treatise, ‘The Trinity of State Decay (Part 1): Sovereign Decoupling and Rival Sovereignty — A Theoretical Statement.’ On Thursday, Harvard Dataverse, owned and operated by Harvard University, published the same work. On Friday morning, an email arrived from the Social Science Open Access Repository (SSOAR), operated by GESIS — the Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Germany — confirming that they too had accepted, published, and archived the paper.

Late Prof. Edward Said

I sat with that for a while. It is exactly three months since The Sunday Stew made its debut. In those three short months, we have produced an original analytical framework (The Insecurity Triad), a comprehensive theoretical formulation (the Trinity of State Decay), and a quantitative index (DSI). Within the same period, the framework entered global scholarly circulation, and now the theoretical paper has been published by three of the world’s most respected scholarly repositories within seventy-two hours of each other. I found myself thinking about the symmetry of it: three months. A trilogy of original contributions. A triple publication in a single week.
Numbers sometimes carry meaning far beyond arithmetic. This one felt like it was trying to tell me something.

I. The Seed Planted in a Library

When The Sunday Stew was conceived, I did not set out to become a framework architect, a theorist, or an index creator. But looking back, I think the seed was planted much earlier — by accident, in the history section of the University of Calabar library.

I was preparing a term paper on Nigerian history. Our lecturer was the late Dr. Erim O. Erim — a man you had to do your absolute best to satisfy. I was moving along the shelves when I stopped. What arrested me was a name on a spine: Sigmund Freud. His biography. I could not understand what such a book was doing in the history section. I took it anyway, borrowed it, and in one week read it cover to cover.

Of everything I read about Freud’s life, one idea lodged itself in my subconscious and has never left: Freud’s concept of immortality. He defined it simply but profoundly: immortality is being known by many anonymous people. Not a mystical phenomenon, but a psychological and systemic one. It is the act of leaving behind an intellectual footprint so distinct that your ideas are absorbed by millions of people who may never meet you, but who must use your language to understand their own reality.

Freud did not merely write a theory. He changed the global vocabulary. Because of Freud, anonymous people who have never read a page of psychoanalysis use the words ego, subconscious, projection, and defence mechanism every single day. They are operating within his architecture without ever knowing it. That, he argued, was immortality.

I was a young man in a university library who had come looking for Nigerian history and stumbled into a philosophy of intellectual legacy. I did not know, at the time, that I had been given a compass.

•Late Antonio Gramsci

II. The Book C.Don Handed Me

Several years later, when I lived in Lagos, I had someone who was (and still is) a friend, a big brother, and a mentor. The home of C.Don Adinuba — then at Ilupeju — was like my second home. I could walk in at any time. C.Don was the perfect host, and his wife a hostess of uncommon warmth. There was never a dull moment in that house. He knew I loved books, and he is himself one of the most intellectually deep people I have ever encountered.

On one of those days, he pulled a book from his shelf, handed it to me, and said: “Go and read this.” I looked at it. The author was unfamiliar. I asked: “Who is Edward Said?” He replied: “Just go and read the book.”

Representations of the Intellectual — which grew out of Said’s 1993 Reith Lectures for the BBC — turned out to be, apart from the Bible, one of the most impactful books I have ever read. In its pages I first encountered Antonio Gramsci, whose Prison Notebooks has made an enduring impression on my intellectual formation and theoretical development. Said’s argument — that the intellectual’s vocation is to speak truth to power, to represent the unrepresented, and to refuse the comfort of specialisation in favour of the discomfort of genuine engagement — became a way of understanding what journalism, practised seriously, is actually for.

And from Antonio Gramsci, particularly his broad conception of the intellectual, I came to understand that intellectuals are not confined to universities, research institutes, or academic titles. Gramsci argued that intellectual activity exists wherever people help shape ideas, interpret reality, organise knowledge, and influence how society understands itself. Through that lens, I realised that journalism is not merely a profession of reporting events; it is an inherently intellectual vocation.

As a journalist, I do more than gather facts and relay information. I help frame public conversations, interrogate power, highlight social challenges, preserve collective memory, and contribute to the global marketplace of ideas. This understanding deepened my sense of responsibility to society. It reinforced the belief that journalism carries a duty not only to inform but also to enlighten, challenge assumptions, encourage critical thinking, and provide citizens with the knowledge necessary to make informed decisions.

Gramsci’s perspective helped me see that the journalist occupies a vital bridge in the relationship between structured knowledge and public life. The responsibility is therefore not simply to report what happens, but to pursue truth rigorously, interpret developments thoughtfully, and contribute constructively to the intellectual and moral development of society. In that sense, journalism became for me not just a career, but a pure form of public intellectual engagement.

These two books — one stumbled upon by accident, one pressed into my hands by C.Don — formed the philosophical foundation on which everything that follows in this column rests. I did not know that at the time. I know it now.

Late Sigmund Freud

III. The Question That Started Everything

When The Sunday Stew made its debut on March 8th, I initially envisioned a column anchored broadly on faith, character, and the structural forces that shape society, with a focus on Nigeria and Africa in a global context. But the second edition on March 15 inspired our current trajectory. Entitled ‘A Country Without Earthquakes — Yet Shaken by Itself’, it explored the tragic reality of Nigeria manufacturing catastrophic man-made disasters while other nations contend merely with natural ones. The insights that came from writing that piece—drawing heavily from an expansive interview a former colleague and I conducted with the late Professor Jubril Aminu in 2012—inspired the rigorous analytical direction this column ultimately took, beginning with the development of The Insecurity Triad.

At the outset, I only set out to understand why Nigeria keeps bleeding. I wanted to discover why the same communities bury the same dead in the same circumstances decade after decade, while the state issues the same predictable condemnations, commissions the same redundant reports, and recommends the same superficial reforms that are never implemented. I set out, in other words, to do journalism.
What I did not anticipate was that the honest, uncompromising pursuit of that question would eventually produce what the academy calls a macro-theoretical framework—and that this framework would, in time, find its home at Harvard and other top-tier scientific repositories.

The Trinity of State Decay did not arrive fully formed. It emerged from a profound frustration—the frustration of a scholar-journalist who has spent years watching analytical frameworks imported wholesale from external academic traditions fail to explain the immediate reality happening in front of his eyes.
Failed state theory, useful as far as it goes, describes a static outcome. It names the corpse but completely fails to trace the actual cause of death. The Fragile States Index produces superficial comparative rankings but isolates no mechanisms. What was missing was an indigenous framework that could explain the operational process—the structural logic by which sovereign authority fractures and is progressively displaced by rival formations.

The insight, when it came, was disarmingly simple: states do not lose control randomly. They lose it systematically along three specific axes—Money, Land, and Mind. When the state loses its command of fiscal and economic legitimacy, when it loses territorial authority over its physical space, and when it loses ideological and psychological hold over the behavioural psyche of the population, something else moves in. Not chaos. Something far worse than chaos: a disciplined, purposeful Shadow Order, which is often more efficient at its enforcement functions than the formal state it is displacing.
This is what the Trinity of State Decay theorises. Not the mere failure of the state—but the active production of an alternative to it.

The geography of legitimate knowledge production has long maintained a centre and a periphery. The global centre produces the theoretical frameworks; the periphery receives them, submissively applies them, and occasionally pushes back against them in minor footnotes. What is happening right now with the Sundiata Post Intelligence Unit (SPIU)—with The Insecurity Triad already circulating in global academic repositories and the Trinity of State Decay now anchored across multiple institutions—is a clear demonstration that intellectual rigour does not possess a postal address.

The publication of the Trinity of State Decay on global scholarly platforms is not an end point. It is the formal opening of a conversation three decades in the making. If in the months, years, and decades to come, a professor at Harvard, a post-doctoral fellow in Legon, a PhD candidate in Oxford, or an undergraduate in Makerere writing a term paper finds it useful and engages with it, our purpose will have been fulfilled. None of them may ever know me personally, just as I never knew Freud, Gramsci, or Said.

Coda: The Symmetry Completes Itself

I began this reflection thinking about the symmetry of three: three months, a trilogy of contributions, a triple publication. But symmetry, I have come to understand, is not always visible at the beginning of a journey. It reveals itself exclusively in retrospect—which is, incidentally, also how Sovereignty Decoupling becomes visible to those who are living through it.

A young man borrowing a biography of Freud by accident in a university library. A mentor handing him Edward Said across a table in Ilupeju. Several years of frontline journalism asking the same stubborn questions about why our nation bleeds. A column that began as political commentary and rapidly transformed, by structural necessity, into a site of deep theoretical production. And now: Harvard, Zenodo, GESIS-SSOAR, all in a single week.

Three months. A trilogy. A triple publication. And with SSOAR’s confirmation arriving on Friday morning, our overall global archival footprint expands to seven critical institutional repositories when we include the foundational papers of The Insecurity Triad: SSRN, Harvard Dataverse, Zenodo, SocArXiv, SSOAR, ResearchGate, and Academia.edu. The symmetry, it appears, was not done with me yet.

The Trinity of State Decay is now available on Harvard Dataverse (doi:10.7910/DVN/ZQWEM7), Zenodo (doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20580627), SSOAR (nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-110533-8), ResearchGate, and Academia.edu. Read it. Push back against it. Apply it. Find its limits. That is exactly what it is there for.

Trust is sacred. Stay seasoned.

•Dr. Max Amuchie is a Scholar-Journalist, Media CEO, and Lead Researcher at the Sundiata Post Intelligence Unit (SPIU). He is the architect of The Insecurity Triad framework for African security analysis, the Trinity of State Decay theory, and the Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI)—original, indigenous analytical frameworks for understanding, categorising, and measuring conflict, state decay, and sovereignty in the Global South. He writes The Sunday Stew, a weekly syndicated column on faith, character, and the structural forces that shape society, with a focus on Nigeria, Africa, and the Global South in a changing world.

X (formerly Twitter): @MaxAmuchie | Email: max.a@sundiatapost.com | Tel: +234(0)8053069436

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Columns

Atiku-Amaechi tag-team: An indication of ADC’s hideous plan for Obi

Published

3 weeks ago

May 31, 2026

Whirlwindnews

Have you been watching the drama happening in ADC? I have, and I have been thoroughly amused doing so. Have you been following the television appearances of Rotimi Amaechi recently? Did you see how the former Governor of Rivers State had been vibrating, assuring of his victory at the party’s presidential primaries?

Did you hear him boasting how he was going to vanquish Atiku Abubakar, former Vice President and now the presidential candidate of the party, indicating that ADC members would prefer him over the seventh-time election-contesting Nigerian record holder, because of his (Amaechi’s) records?

Did you see the vehemence with which he warned that television host, to “stop that nonsense,” for suggesting that he could end up as the VP candidate to the same Atiku? Did you see how he rolled his bulging eyes and how angry he sounded?

Did you read the statement of the former Minister of Transportation, rejecting the outcome of the ADC presidential primaries, even before it was finally announced on Wednesday.

Now, pan the camera to the Abuja home of the same Amaechi – by the way – I could swear the ambiance could compete with the palace of the Sultan of Brunei – how did he do it – but how could I forget his wife is a money-minting machine!

Did you see the selfsame man with Atiku? Did you notice the difference? Did you notice the robustness, the comicalness? Did you watch the chumminess and the camaraderie? What meaning did you read into it? You actually have to be an initiate to correctly read everything perfectly.

Just wait for a few days to hear the announcement. I won’t be the one to tell you that the huffing and puffing, the air-punching and the table-banging is all for one thing – the VP position.

For those who had advocated that Obi stayed back and contested with Atiku, it would have been a fatal gambit. He would have come a distant third in the contest, competing with Mohammed Hayatu-Deen. Not because it will be so by the desires of the members, but the goons, wanted it so and would have made it so.

Even the position of the VP which hitherto had been bandied as his for the asking, would have eluded him. Amaechi was there to pick it up.

You heard Dele Momodu an accomplice in that plot telling you that Amaechi was more experienced than Obi in that interview with Charles Aniagolu on ARISE NEWS Television’s Prime Time.

It was all figured out. If Peter Obi had fallen to the plot he would have been the greatest political mugu of the century. He would have rubbished the rock-strong foundation on which his profile was built and stands today – as businessman and politician.

Indeed the plot appeared skewed towards not only making him wave goodbye to politics forever, but caast a huge slur on his exhilarating credentials that account to his being celebrated as one of the most successful Nigerian business tycoons today.

Only a few seconds and the trap would have snapped. Had he waited a few days more in that ADC environment, it would have been over. He would have been trapped in the odd situation of point of no return.

By now he would have become an object of mockery and an item of sport for his enemies. Tons of them would be having a bellyful of laughter over his ordeal by now – had he wasted a second more.

But having that laugh would mean that the eagle has lost its lustre. Obi isn’t Obi just by name. Now, here is the Obi they wanted to trick into a trap. Still in his early 20s, he drove three cars he bought with his own money before graduating from the university.

First year – a Volkswagen Beetle (today’s Venza) – second year a Peugeot 505 (today’s Prado) – third year – a BMW (Today’s Maybach). Now think of yourself as a student then. Think of your children that are students today. That would bring you closer to the persona in question.

It didn’t end there. Still as an undergraduate, he owned the supermarket on campus. There was more. He built residential houses and became a landlord to students and locals in the university community – one of them, said to be Abubakar Sa’ad, the current Sultan of Sokoto, who was then a military officer.

De hear o! This same Obi, was among the 1,000-ONLY, UK customers the American Express Bank gave their Platinum Cards. You know what that means. In the whole of the UK – including oyibo people of all nationalities doing business.

Before his 33rd birthday, this Obi, had become Chairman of a commercial bank and director of other blue-chip companies. At the same age when his colleagues still clutch files in their armpits in pursuit of jobs, he was already heading a conglomerate of firms dealing with supplies and distribution of goods.

So, add all these up! Imagine the number of intriguing situations he must have dealt with in this long journey. Imagine the boardroom politics. Imaging the various business tricks he must have survived.
In politics, this same Obi practically cut off the head of the political monster prowling Anambra for years.

Before his arrival, the whole of the state was one huge conflagration and cataclysm. Elements sponsored by patrons of evil had razing down structures including the Government House of governor’s residence. Anambra was all chaos – a huge bedlam!

But all these Obi faced and conquered, arresting the tempest, quietening the tide and smoothening the waves – not without battles – there was a deluge of them – but with willpower, wisdom, tenacity, consistency, and above all – courage.

He battled the electoral heist that stole his original mandate, won, then impeachment, triumphed, then abrupt tenure termination, challenged it and returned to power – battled entrenched interests in the labour unions – teachers, doctors, workers – et al – prevailed and handed down a new Anambra sitting on the foundation of sobriety and good behaviour.

Now this was the man they wanted to trick. Obi’s case would have been that of the late John Chukwu, the hero in the tragicomedy, Isubru Ekperi – described as the crab which swam across the mighty ocean, but fell in the woman’s pot of soup.

Had Obi, stayed in ADC to contest against Atiku, his fate would have mimicked Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, whom for fear of being thought weak, destroyed his own destiny by killing Ikemefuna and ended up committing suicide! But providence was on his side;

Thankfully, he did not. And today, NDC provides a new horizon. Nigerians are being provided the opportunity of a new country, that could rise from the ashes of the old order – a clean break from the past – a new hope of awakening the sleeping giant!

The Tiny Voice!

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Columns

Jonathan 2027: Between honour of national duty and shame of self-interest

Published

3 weeks ago

May 28, 2026

Whirlwindnews

By Sunny Igboanugo

On Wednesday, April 22, 2026, Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria’s 14th leader and the fourth elected President was at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on a visit to President Bola Tinubu. Nobody knew the content of that visit because discussions were conducted closed doors.

However, knowing Tinubu, would anything concerning him ever be free of politics, especially given the nuances of the season? Would the snake ever give birth to a creature that is short?

Naturally, as it is wont with Nigeria where one event takes over from the other in quick successions, the Jonathan visit, naturally disappeared – buried inside the reservoir of public consciousness.

But then, things have begun to unfold that people are not only now returning to that April visit, but are taking notes as well as connecting the dots.

Nothing yet seems definite, except in the realm of the popular local saying that when a witch cries at night and the baby dies in the morning, the people know where to look.

Indeed, the droppings of the caterpillar on the ground is making people look up to the tree to see if they are actually eating the green leaves on them. Naturally, events around the 14th President, do not look ordinary – at least not that ordinary to escape more than a scant public scrutiny.

So, when on Thursday May 7, 2026 youths stormed the Abuja office of the ex-President urging him to run for the office he left in 2015, after his historic defeat by Muhammadu Buhari, it elicited a deeper interest from the previous attempts. Yes! It wasn’t the first time Nigerians would be making the pitch. Several groups had tried in the past, even as far back as the 2023 elections.

So, the attempt three weeks ago, was not new. But, this time, eyebrows were raised all the same because it seemed to conduce more intriguing interpretations. Therefore, instead of mere passing interests, Nigerians are now interrogating deeply, putting two and two together.

How much did the former President know about that visit? Did those youths ambush him or was he in the know that such a visit would take place? Was it what is known here as an arrangee – a well-crafted political facade?

Then came the angle of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). A long time ago, when speculations were rife that Peter Obi, was being courted by the former ruling party to return and run for the 2027 presidential election on its platform, Jerry Gana, a stalwart of the party had served notice that they even had a more seducing and deliverable option. It turned out to be Jonathan.

So, long before the Nyesom Wike devastating blow on the party that has kept it in its prostrate state, Jonathan had been on the cards as the number one option for the party. Therefore, it follows that the current steps the party is taking to draft him in, to run as its candidate in the election, is normal. But is it?

The argument in PDP quarters for the Jonathan choice is because he is the only one constitutionally barred from contesting a second term, he is the most fitted to satisfy all shades of political interests in Nigeria today, especially the North eager to return to power. Quite scintillating.

But seducing as this appears, there is a hugely compelling argument against the move. A groundswell of analysts swear that the ex-President is being pushed into the ring as an instrument to stop Peter Obi, the current moving train threatening to crush the ambition of Tinubu to remain in office beyond 2027. In other words, the sole reason is to play the spoiler role.

Supposing this is the reason. Then what is before us is more fatal than critical. This is the same Jonathan whose singular act of calling Buhari that morning on March 31, 2015 to concede defeat, suddenly catapulted him to a global democratic icon – the same that hops into presidential planes to other countries in Africa to straighten crooked democratic roads.

Now, would the same Jonathan swear with his church mind that Tinubu’s model of democracy is what he would prescribe even for an enemy country, let alone Nigeria? What aspect of the country has Tinubu not damaged. So, what would make him a Tinubu’s ally in the further destruction of Nigeria, if he truly loves the country?

This was the same Jonathan who swore that his ambition was not worth the blood of any Nigerian. Is he not aware that the land on which he’s standing is already soaked with the blood of the same citizens by the sheer butchery that is happening daily in the country under the nose of the most underwhelming President yet? Isn’t this the issue now?

Indeed, not a few people have argued that Jonathan should be in the forefront of the Obi project. For one, Obi was once his appointee apart from being a sworn ally. So, he would be in a position to ascertain his true qualities first hand and confirm that he’s the only one among the lot that could fix the country. Even an imbecile knows that Obi would create the clean break from the past that Nigeria needs today to build the future everyone desires.

Besides, he Jonathan, if anything is substantially part of the reason the South East is in its current state at the moment, the level of support the area gave him throughout his tenure is part of the reason the late Buhari increased his hatred for the Igbo a million times more – a phenomenon he transferred through the APC to Tinubu – and which the current President has been unable to extricate himself from.

Okay, is the former President not aware that the position Tinubu is sitting on today belongs to the South East – the zone that took him like one of them that they even gave him an Igbo name – Ebele. If everyone else shortchanges Ndigbo, would he also join, given the foregoing? What manner of ingratitude would that be?

O yes! He has had his Villa meeting. PDP has adopted him as their candidate. Even the legal barrier that would have stopped him, was cleared on Monday when Justice Peter Lifu of the Federal High Court, Abuja, handed him the all-clear sign. He has told the world that he is consulting. While at it, hopefully, more people would tell him the home truth.

Fortunately, he was the one who said it is easy to wake someone that is actually asleep than someone pretending to be asleep. Regrettably, by his silence since the obscene drama began, it appears he prefers the latter. Therefore, his action would not derive from ignorance.

If he finally bites at the apple, it wouldn’t be because he didn’t know how much Tinubu has messed up Nigeria and the implication of reinforcing him with another four years.

His complicity wouldn’t mean that he doesn’t know what to do to reverse the trend. It would only mean that personal interest has taken the better part of him and not the love of the country.

If he deliberately makes that choice, with both eyes open, then he’s welcome in the hall of infamy rather than honour. Fortunately, there is still a window to prove that the foregoing was a mere political nightmare and not reality. But otherwise, it would be apposite for Nigerians to say in unison – GOODLUCK?

My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!

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