Columns

Soyinka’s Metamorphosis, Echoes from “The Peoples Mandate! This is my story!

Published

2 years ago

November 4, 2024

By Sunny Igboanugo

Today I formally announce the publication of my book, titled: Soyinka’s Metamorphosis: Echoes from “The People’s Mandate,” a copy of which I have just received on arrival from the UK where it was published. It is a direct response to the book: Baiting Igbophobia, The Sunny Igboanugo Thesis, authored by Prof. Wole Soyinka and released sometime in January this year.

This 2024 marks my 33 years of practice as a journalist, starting from my debut with The Guardian in 1991 to joining Daily Independent in 2001 as pioneer staff and now Publisher of Whirlwindnews, an online newspaper.

My career, like those of many of my colleagues, has been marked with the ups and downs prevalent with the practice of the profession in Nigeria. For instance, as a cub reporter still learning the ropes, I was nearly mobbed by some angry civil service workers at St. Bridget College, Asaba where some of them who left Benin after the creation of Delta State from the old Bendel, by the Ibrahim Babangida regime in 1991, were quartered for lack of accommodation.

One evening, few days after arriving the city as the first reporter of The Flagship, posted to the new state, I had undertaken a discreet, but purely noble mission to investigate and ascertain the condition of the workers in their temporary abode. But the mission, purely part of my job as a reporter, soon blew into my face. The affected workers whose emotional state of reasoning appeared to have been held in place by a thin fibre due to the sudden change in their condition, and threatening to snap at any moment, soon became suspicious.

The line of my inquiry and general mannerism, which betrayed my level as a rookie, had triggered off a volley of questions from some of them, palpably, but understandably on the edge. They began to suspect I might be a criminal on a recce mission to survey their territory for later night attack, especially, as I was to discover later, as they received their salaries on the same day. It was only by the intervention of providence that I was saved from the obvious lynching. That fate could probably have included being ringed with tyre, laced with petrol and set on fire, a popular scene that portrays a sendoff party to criminals in Nigeria, known as “jungle justice.”

Again, today, I carry the physical and psychological lacerations of the aftermaths of the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential elections as a believer and direct participant in the attempt to revalidate that historic mandate, which has since been achieved today. So involved was I that when the UN Special rapporteurs arrived Enugu where I was later transferred, to investigate the rights abuses associated with the June 12 struggle, I was one of the candidates they interviewed privately.

Yet again, in 2007, a state governor took four pages each in virtually all newspapers in Nigeria to denigrate me as blackmailer. His effort was to warn Nigerians about this unscrupulous journalist who went to government houses around Nigeria harassing governors for money. Ironically, this was a governor, unlike many in my line of duty, I never ever met in person, either in his private or official capacity even till date. My only crime was insisting on the sanctity of the tenure of the leadership of Ohanaeze Ndigbo during their crisis that year and thereabouts, when it was being manipulated by some powers outside the Igbo space, with the damning effect of corralling, or should I say, plunging the collective will of the people into an unnecessary suicide.

This same governor, even took out a lawsuit against me some years after and was sustaining the move to have me jailed on no account order than my purely professional duties, until providence – that fate that helps tailless-cow to chase away flies – ensured that he never made it back for a second term to continue the onslaught.

Why did I travel this far through the route of memory? It is to underscore the fact that I am not new to the travails embedded in this profession, which I love so much that I beg my creator that should I return to this part of life again, I should be allowed to practice again.

The three examples above are just samples of them. Though the joy of the glorious moments, sometimes far outweighs the pains, trials and tribulations, they are still numerous and, in many cases, life-threatening.

Yet, none of these, has brought me to the devastating level of distress I experienced in the last few months, since this book by Prof. Soyinka came to my attention. It almost brought me to the state of emotional wreck. The said book, under his INTERVENTION SERIES, was in response to my article of September 19, 2023. In the said opinion piece that triggered the mighty pen of the literary giant, I had tried, purely in line of duty, to establish the motive behind the Prof’s posturing about the 2023 presidential election, particularly with reference to Peter Obi and the Labour Party. In expounding my logic, I tried to stay the course, as a professional ought to, never delving into personal attacks or insinuating anything untoward against the revered sage.

But what did I get in reply? In his riposte via the book, the Prof. only made a scant mention of the content of the article in question. Instead, he devoted the rest to attacking my Igbo identity. Surely, if the sage, had descended on me as a person, if he had reduced me as less than Nebuchadnezzar, as he once labelled, former President Goodluck Jonathan, I would have remained mute and probably continued with my trade the way I know it.

Reading the book itself, he did exactly that. He treated me to a lavish buffet of his legendary tongue-lashing. But he did not stop at describing my persona in the most terrible terms or attacking my professional competence. For this alone there would not have been any form of contest in the form of a riposte.

My pain was the attempt by the Prof. to strip me of my identity as a Nigerian and closet me in purely ethnic straightjacket. There was nothing in the original piece from me that suggested any ethnic link by any stroke imagination. The only link I tried to establish was that the NADECO affinity the Nobel Laureate shares with President Bola Tinubu as veterans of the June 12 struggle. My take was that it was the binding factor.

I tried to explain how, having struggled together through the thick and thin of the NADECO era they had developed the compelling need to watch each other’s back no matter the circumstances. I argued that such relationship would naturally create personal indebtedness too difficult to break.

That was all my piece was all about. Even though the said article had one or two factual errors which the Prof. did not fail to point out in his book, they did not detract from the texture of the reasoning that formed the basis for holding my views. The emphasis was on the affinity that existed between him and Tinubu.

I was therefore completely aghast when the Prof. took the issue completely out of context and veered into ethic labelling. That the Prof. would take that route is my idea of a complete metamorphosis. I would not in my wildest imagination assume that the Soyinka of The Man Died fame would descend into such arena occupied by less-endowed in the society. Ordinarily, I would have depended on him to defend my right and freedom to speak my mind. But that did not happen.

That informed my determination to reply through this effort. I have decided to tell my own story to establish my true identity and insist on it. The content of this book, my own riposte, is to reveal that the Prof. is totally wrong on this.

In fact, some people still latching on similar ethnic sentiments, tried to dissuade me by pulling up what they advertised as the pro-Biafra sentiments of the Prof. They raised the issue of how he tried to help the Igbo during the civil war advising that I should ignore him.

That even strengthened my position, because I believe keeping silent would help in strengthening the ethnic slurs that have now become the burden of the Igbo man, because the likes of the Prof. are keeping silent and, in some cases promoting it. Those who read his book will not miss this trend. I believe that such a figure who stood against the bad hand dealt the Igbo people of Biafra at such a young age, should even do more now that age has added more insight and knowledge to him.

I believe my reply would reactivate his memory and remind him of who he truly is in the history of Nigeria. It was a duty I felt compelled to do. How did the Igbo come into such a plain discourse? So, an Igbo man cannot contribute to any subject in today’s Nigeria without being told from whence he is coming? Even a journalist? This is the essence of this book. This book is therefore a PROTEST! I am not only protesting with this book as an individual, but to draw global attention to the dangerous trend that has become the lot of Ndigbo today, where they are being deliberately targeted as the culprits to anything that goes wrong in the country.

I am insisting that nobody can take away my Nigerianess. I am aware that I am a global dwarf compared to the dominating image of Prof. Wole Soyinka globally. I do not compete with him or attempt to do so in any way. His own book, as usual, is already making waves nationally and internationally like many other of his works.

Mine may make little impact. But whatever impact it makes, even if it is read by one person, I will be glad that someone outside myself would have heard my story. That is why I am happy today. For the first time in months, I have once again regained some level of personal calm. I have told my story, from my little corner of the world space. Let Prof. Wole Soyinka have the world stage, but allow me to have my corner where my voice, no matter how tiny will be allowed to echo. That is my prayer.

Of course, aside my protest, I have also used this book to try and tell the full story based on my views and how I captured the 2023 general election, particularly that of the presidential polls of February 25. It is a full package that tried to puncture some of the assertions out there in the public domain, including those made by the Nobel Laureate made regarding the election.

I tried to capture the full sequence of events, their meaning and how they affected the outcome of the election in the most unbiased manner and in the end declared who I believe won the election between Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP and Peter Obi of the Labour Party.

In the end, just as I spoke some 31 years ago on June 12, I spoke as professionally as any individual in the book. I shall continue to do so in the future. I spoke yesterday, I am speaking today and I shall speak tomorrow. I shall not only speak as an Igbo, I shall speak as a Nigerian – Nigerian with my full chest. Just like Prof. Wole Soyinka, a Yoruba or Adamu, an Hausa will speak.

Igboanugo, a reporter and Editor-in-Chief of Whirlwindnews.com.ng can be reached on ezekeoku1@gmail.com

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Columns

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

Published

4 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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