Columns
My dear Sowore: Peter Obi is not mere packaging! Butterfly, not a bird either
First, I must acknowledge that no man is infallible. As a Catholic, I used to pride myself with the seducing mantra, embedded in the alluring belief that the Pope, the Catholic Pontiff and the custodian of the Catholic faith is. But that was until I listened to the explanation behind the teaching earlier in my Catechism class that the Pope is infallible.
It was then that I learnt that even with the Pontiff there are conditions for that. One of them is that the Pope is infallible only when he is speaking ex-cathedra. That is when he mounts the Papal Chair of Saint Peter, to whom Jesus Christ handed over His sheep, thus becoming the foundation of Christianity, according to the Catholic doctrine on the Bible.
Even beyond that, the Pope does not just come out to make such pronouncements after sleeping and waking up. There must have been a conclave involving the hierarchy of the church, where such a doctrinal issue would have been x-rayed and exhausted fully, relying on the huge spiritual endowment and tradition of the church. In other words, the Pope, just like other Catholics, is a sinner. He goes to priests to confess his sins.
What am I saying and how does it relate? It means I don’t expect anyone to be without sin(s). If a whole Pope cannot be so exculpated, who then is spared? Now, you must have watched the video of Omoyele Sowore, in his latest posturing on Peter Obi, former Governor of Anambra State and presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the February 25, 2023 election.
Sowere, publisher of SaharaReporters, one of Nigeria’s most influential online newspapers, and himself, a presidential candidate on the platform of the African Action Congress (AAC), in the same election, was at the Honest Bunch, a popular podcast with a lot influence in the Nigerian space. There, he laboured – a real struggle it was – like in any and every case of his traducers – to diminish the reputation of the former governor.
He dismissed Obi’s characterisation in a rather lackadaisical if not derisive fashion. He called it Packaging! Indeed, in this rather pernicious anti-Peter Obi attempt, he tried to lump him together with all Nigerian politicians, except himself. His reasoning was that any Nigerian who had held the position, from a local government councillor to President, should be discountenanced as an under-performer or corrupt or both. This is where, according to him, Obi belonged.
How infantile! But he wasn’t done, but stressed with some haughty mien, buried in some bogus, if not clearly obtuse reasoning. Asked specifically, he did not point at a particular point where Obi had erred outside another mere attempt at generalisation. “Obi is like every other Nigerian politician who has held office before,” he said. Even when his interviewers raised the issue of Obi leaving a whopping N75billion in the coffers of the state by the time he was exiting office, Sowore dismissed it.
He inferred that it was not true. And what was his evidence? He relied on what he said he heard Willie Obiano, Obi’s successor in office say about the money. Did I hear you scream Willie what? Yes! The same Obiano that was ambushed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport (MMIA), as the anti-graft agency, said then – trying to escape the country to the US.
Have you forgotten that ugly image of the jittery-looking ex-banker-turned-governor, nervously clutching a bottle of water, obviously petrified by the thoughts of his sure fate in the hands of the red-jackets, with his eyes darting in different directions like a trapped rabbit as he sat on a bare iron chair – stripped to only a pair of red knickers, Tee-shirts and slippers? Those guys know how to diminish their victims – never mind that the matter has since sunk into the river like thousands others like it, as it is consistent with the EFCC.
I’m not mocking the Akpokuodike of Umueri, but only trying to emphasise that the difference between him and Obi. Of course, I need not ask Nigerians to choose who to believe between the two, given their records in the same state. That attempt to flee the country happened just a few hours after Obiano handed over to Chukwuma Soludo, his successor. I leave you to figure the reason. I also leave you to figure the reason why the matter has gone into audio sound, as our people will say nowadays.
Did Sowore also hear the story also about Obiano’s claim that Obi asked him to make a refund of N7billion, which he said was his predecessors sum of the money he spent in making him governor? That was also part of the story during the pendency of the quarrel between the two, all which began when they parted ways and the godfather began to support another candidate for the number one job in the state.
Like Obi was wont to dismiss the story in those days, why would he need to ask for N7billion when he could have pocketed the whole N75billion? The highest result would have been a few days in the EFCC goal, which from the story of Bobrisky, Nigerians now know is not a death sentence after all and that with the right string pulled, could even be akin to taking a nap in a classy hotel room.
Okay, Sowore believed Obiano that the said money in the bank was “tied to projects,” already awarded. What about it? Did it vitiate the fact that money was saved or diminish the impact of such projects. In fact, that Obi started saving money for the state from day-one tells more of the story.
But that was not even the case. Everybody at the handover to Obiano, witnessed when Obi was naming each of the banks and the amount he left in them. He was calling their Managing Directors to step forward to acknowledge their existence to clear any doubt. Each of them obliged. Even years after, these same banks still attested to the fact of the existence of the funds. All Sowore needed was to go back to the video evidence.
Let us even concede to Sowore, Obiano and others who believe him that it is audio-money that Obi was talking about. What about the other aspects of this man’s stories – some tales that are clearly beyond contemplation in Nigeria – not to talk of believing them. One of them being that Obi practically denied his own mother the pleasure of accompanying the delegation that went to marry his wife, Magaret from Akwa Ibom.
Why? It was his way of saving cost. Obi, had made provision for 12 people only and when push came to shove and it became obvious that the numbers had to be pruned down, his own mother was asked to step down. After all, in his own argument, the same bride would be coming home where the mother and daughter-in-law would meet and live permanently. Is this also “packaging?”
This was more than two decades before he ever dreamt of politics. Many people then would have hired buses for the same event. I did. The fact that Obi had started of talking of saving costs at a time young men like him would willingly show off with their wealth to impress the public is a demonstrable evidence to contradict the “packaging” tag.
Was it also “packaging” that Obi rejected his official residence in Ikoyi, a tradition accorded to his peers, when he was appointed the Chairman of Fidelity Bank. Obi not only preferred his own rented house in FESTAC town, but the line up of exotic cars that came with the office – a development, which I learnt encouraged other members of the board to toe the same line. This was way back before he became governor.
I’m sure Sowore has heard about that unique narrative from a Port Harcourt residence? Yes, the story of how Obi fixed the road to the estate housing one of his warehouses. The residents had sent a delegation to notify him that the trailers coming to the warehouse had damaged part of the roads rendering it inaccessible.
Instead of the rash and brash response of the usual Nigerian big man, Obi had apologised, saying he would see what he could do. To their complete amazement, even before the delegation could return to those who sent them to report progress at the next call, bulldozers and tractors were sent to the road and by the time they left, months later the road was far better than the original state. The man who gave that account would certainly not believe Sowore that it was “packaging.” He appreciated the reality, hence he took time to cite at the time it mattered so that Nigerians would know.
It may also be packaging that Obi is building a hospital in Ukana community, Enugu State, where his late elder sister was married to. The community had expected him to dole out wads of cash or kill many cows to announce his true presence in giving his sister what is known in Nigeria a befitting burial. Imagine their disappointment as they did not get it. Imagine the impact now, as they are getting a hospital.
Is it also part of the “packaging” that as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Obi did not accept any of the perks of office including cars and official salaries. It must also be “packaging” that at the time 35 of his colleagues were angling to share the entire savings from the excess crude account, he was the only one recorded by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, then Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy as objecting and insisting on saving something.
The day Obi stood before Ejike Mbaka and like Jesus before Pontius Pilate, kept silent as the Catholic priest harried and hounded him to no ends, Sowore was not at home. He might have been haggling for fish at Dugbe Market in Ibadan.
Is it “packaging” that Obi boasts that he has just one house, located in Onitsha and no other place in Nigeria and any other one identified to his name anywhere in the country should be seized? Is it “packaging” that he visits at least one school or hospital every week, where he doles out cash in donations? Is it “packaging” that he carries his own bags at airports or has been flying economy ever since he started travelling? Is it “packaging” that he sleeps in cheap hotel rooms?
Obi’s only daughter, a multi-degree holder trained in the United Kingdom has since elected to return home to Nigeria to help mould young minds as a secondary school teacher instead of throwing up his father’s name to get instant high-octane jobs in the banks and other blue-chip firms where he has investments. She is also qualified to secure jobs in global entities like the UN, UNICEF, WHO or even the Silicon Valley, home to Microsoft, X or Facebook.
These are places where her mates with such tall academic credentials, plus the right connections are. Perhaps, foregoing such positions in place of a “common classroom teacher,” is also “packaging.” Would Sowore allow his own daughter after such huge investment in personal development take such a job?
Perhaps, Sowore is blind not to notice that on the day of her wedding, not a single private jet was noticed at the airport near the venue and there was no roadblock anywhere close. How is it possible? All Obi needed was to snap his fingers and things would start happening. Which other man or woman of Obi’s position in the country would celebrate the son or daughter’s wedding without the entire sky going dark with rains of influence for days?
Even Sowore! Would he accept that? I fully understand his situation. Obi is far beyond his reach. The former governor, is simply doing the impossible and he couldn’t bring himself to the reality. I’m sure the SaharaReporters boss, would be willing to give anything in lieu of something to hold on Obi. He craves Obi’s moral and social standing and the accolades and the recognition therefrom. Surely, no Nigerian could be that pristine in conduct and character. Nobody could have such a near-perfect record – in business – in office – in family life. How is it possible?
So, he shoots off, frantically looking for something to hold on to. Like his brother, Reno Omokri in similar business of propaganda and empty sloganeering, having not found any blemish, he tries to invent one. Imagine Reno saying that Obi is not worth much because he did not build a primary school in Anambra as a governor. Perhaps, nobody has told him that Anambra maintains the status of the richest state in Nigeria in terms of per capita.
Is it a state where the smallest town has one or two hotels capable of hosting even foreign envoys comfortably that would be crying of primary schools in the villages – I know some state capitals where there are no decent hotel accommodations in Nigeria. It is villages where the likes of Reno hails from that would be talking of primary or secondary schools and not Anambra. Building extra primary schools anywhere in Anambra is unnecessary surplusage – a waste of money. And Obi doesn’t waste money. He hates it and that’s why he is in conflict with the rest of his peers and become the darling of the masses.
Just like you would hear some people, including Reno, mouthing that Obi built a brewery instead of schools or peddling some other infantile mantras, forgetting the amount of money breweries like Guinness sends to Dublin, its home on yearly basis or the amount Heineken makes for Germany. For starters, the yearly revenue of these two companies could make Nigeria bounce back to money is not our problem era of General Yakubu Gowon.
It could not have been packaging that Obi was such a huge success, even as a student of the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN). His Nsukka story, resonates everywhere even before he told it himself to the Honest Bunch crew, where Sowore later went to demean him. It depicted that even as a young man in his 20s, he had carved a niche for himself in terms of financial engineering through sheer dint of hardwork, nose for opportunities and personal restraints from the disease of squandermania. Imagine living in his own house, buying three cars at different stages before graduation and building two bank branches as a student. Was that also packaging?
Sowore’s other problem is found in virtually all his counterparts past and present, hugging this effusive “activism” mantra, a term which has assumed a different meaning from what it is elsewhere – the problem of personal interest first before the national interest. Else, where is the basis of comparison between him and Obi? Like many others of his ilk, he simply wants to be what Obi is without being so. So, instead of accolades, it has evoked envy.
Like so many of the so-called activists in the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), who had adopted activism by day and acquiesces by night, Sowore believes that he has postured enough in Nigeria to deceive the people into adorning him with the national hero toga. But for me, the only thing worthy of recognition is his ability to hit the national consciousness, so early in life. It takes some talent, good or bad, negative or positive to achieve that. After all, Lawrence Anini did so, just as Victor Osimhen. But dreaming of Obi’s reputation in and out of Nigeria is stretching it too far.
People like Mao Zedong, Martin Luther King, Lee Kuan Yew, Patrice Lumumba, Thomas Sakara, Jerry Rawlings, didn’t just become what they were by mere rabble-rousing. They identified the needs of their people and worked towards them. They knew it was not about them as individual but their nation. That’s the difference. Here, with people like Sowore, it is a different kettle of fish.
But no matter how well-fed, a butterfly will never become a bird or a lizard, crocodile. The difference between him and Obi is that marked and evident. If he truly wants to earn a spot for himself, the only way is to back-pedal, accept the reality. Teaming up with Dele Farotimi, who has since recognised the Obi phenomenon and its meaning to The New Nigeria Project, and has pursued it with every gusto, in promoting this project, may not be a bad idea! I rest my case.
My name is Sunny Igboanugo and I’m The Tiny Voice!
Columns
The Three-Month Sprint (1): Philosophical Architecture of an Intellectual Trilogy of State Decay
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
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!
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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