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Application of common sense in leadership versus propaganda

Published

2 years ago

December 2, 2024

Whirlwindnews

By John Okiyi Kalu

There are three issues most national opinion molders hold against former Governor of Abia State, Dr Okezie Ikpeazu: N500 for pregnant women; hunters and palm wine tappers as Ebubeagu operatives, and Chicken Republic as metaphor for economic growth.

While the then Governor might not have used the language of the media to explain those issues, it has always been clear to me his actions were common sense solutions that should be studied and applauded.

According to Section 14(2) (b) of the 1999 (amended) Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government. It is left for every leader in government to evolve policies and programs that will deliver on the purpose of its existence. It follows therefore that a successful government in Nigeria is one that fulfills the purpose of its existence and not the one that made the most noise in the media. While some leaders prefer to silently do their job, others deploy media noise as their cardinal focus of governance.

Common sense is simply the ability to think and behave in a reasonable way and to make good decisions. Common sense leadership dictates that in prescribing solutions to a challenge, leaders must think things through, have good knowledge of the environment and use what they have (including human and financial resources) in the right mix to deliver and sustain good governance.

N500 to pregnant women in Abia State

While reviewing data on maternal and infant mortality in Abia State, it was discovered that most women in rural Abia preferred to use the services of traditional birth attendants whose methods have long been judged to be crude and unsafe by health authorities. Yet, those birth attendants were the closest to rural women.

Ikpeazu’s solution was to equip and proliferate primary healthcare centers (PHCs) across the state (over 700 located in 184 wards of the state) and link them to a 24/7 Telehealth center (dial-a-doc) located inside government house, Umuahia, with medical doctors on call to attend to issues from all the PHCs. With that firmly established, the challenge was how to get pregnant rural women to visit the healthcare centers instead of patronising traditional birth attendants.

Governor Ikpeazu decided to incentivise change by simply approving N500 for transport to a healthcare facility to be paid on every visit. The implication was that if a pregnant woman visited 20 times for checks, she would collect N500 multiplied by 20. In addition to that, every pregnant woman was offered free birth-pack, valued at more than N40,000 at the time, as well as delivery at zero cost. In most public hospitals in Nigeria it costs at least N200,000 to deliver a baby.

Available data clearly shows that as a result of the common sense measures put in place by Governor Ikpeazu, attendance to healthcare facilities in Abia increased by 71% under his watch with maternal/infant mortality rate dropping by more than 30%. In fact, the World Health Organisation and the Federal Ministry of Health issued its first and only gold award for Primary Healthcare Under One Roof to Governor Okezie Ikpeazu for doing an excellent work.

Hunters, Palmwine Tappers and Ebubeagu

In the days when the formation of a regional security force was popular within the South East, there were two major related security issues: farmers-herdsmen clashes and kidnapping for ransom. At the heart of the two security challenges were reports of armed gangs living in forests in Igbo land from where they attacked security agents and innocent folks then take their victims back to the forests until ransom was paid.

Our people wanted the criminals removed from our forests and believed that the formation of an armed Ebubeagu force would achieve that. But Governor Ikpeazu was not convinced about arming Ebubeagu because he recalled the extra-judicial activities of the defunct Bakassi Boys that led to loss of several innocent lives in our state and said something profound during one of the meetings of the state executive council: “No doubt, we have a problem and must solve it but we should ask ourselves this: if we arm our people to fight the criminals how do we retrieve the arms afterwards and what will a hungry man with skills in use of arms do when people are not looking?”

We decided that since there were conventional armed security forces like the police, army, navy, DSS, civil defence and others operating within our state the solution should be to empower and deliver prompt and precise information to them to ensure they do the job for which they receive salary. We approved massive support (financial incentives, vehicles, communication gadgets, monitoring and control centers, modem operational structures etc), from the government of Abia State to those agencies.

In addition to increased funding for regular security forces, improvements in crime fighting infrastructure, we also approved take off resources for Ebubeagu strictly as community-based information and intelligence gathering outfit that did not bear arms while concurrently developing a second-to-none information sharing structure between the government and security agencies. I make bold to state that under Ikpeazu it was near impossible for new faces to enter any of our communities without the information coming to the center in Umuahia. Suspicious visitors were monitored until they left or were interrogated by regular security agents.

The result of Ikpeazu’s common sense approach was that Abia became the oasis of peace in a troubled South East region and among the top three safest states in Nigeria. In contrast, those states that celebrated armed Ebubeagu with popular applause recorded higher crime waves and widespread insecurity that still haunt the states to date. Ikpeazu received national awards on security without toeing the popular path but rather applying common sense approach to leadership.

Chicken Republic as a metaphor for economic growth

While answering questions on investment and economic growth under his watch, Governor Okezie Ikpeazu cited proliferation of Chicken Republic Restaurant branches in the state as evidence of improvement. The usual crowd decided to make a joke out of it without reviewing to understand where he was going with that. But few correctly understood his example to mean that increased consumption and patronage for luxury food brands signpost growth in economic activities within a location.

Permit me to briefly digress with VAT collection before returning to the Chicken Republic metaphor. Definitionally, VAT refers to a consumption tax on goods and services levied at each stage of the supply chain where value is added. It goes without saying that its volume in a locality can be used as an indication of the volume of buying and selling in the area. So states with low economic activities usually have low VAT collection and vice versa.

Recently, NBS reported that Abia State has dropped to 35th position on VAT remittances. With an economist as the current Governor of the state he should ordinarily be worried because the ranking shows very low and declining economic activities within the state. More crucially, it is a valid indicator that whatever the government is spending in terms of construction, payment to workers etc, are not being felt in the state but rather being siphoned out of the state. A government that claims to have spent more than N300 billion in infrastructure and salaries should be worried that VAT collection is declining on its watch.

It is also very easy to guess that low VAT collection means outfits like Chicken Republic are making much less than they were doing before now and if that trend continues, they will close shops in Abia and go elsewhere. Meanwhile, the propaganda mill says Abia has improved a million times under the incumbent Governor but simple check with independent data suggests otherwise to the educated mind. The situation raises very profound issues for further research on what is happening to Abia money.

So, when Governor Ikpeazu pointed to proliferation of Chicken Republic and such other outfits on his watch he was rightly advancing the case that economic activities were improving including investment in the state from outside. He was simply saying money was flowing into his state and the economic wellbeing of his people was improving on his watch. VAT receipts and other data supported his position.

When the NBS, World Bank and relevant Federal Government agencies studied multi-dimensional poverty index across the country, they rated Ikpeazu’s Abia as the third best in Nigeria with indicators that included employment, healthcare, security and economic growth. What does that say to you about commonsense approach to leadership compared to high sounding propaganda?

Chief Kalu was Commissioner for Information, Trade & Investment in Abia State

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The Sundiata Post Model (2): Historical and intellectual foundations of a knowledge-producing newsroom

Published

14 minutes ago

July 12, 2026

Whirlwindnews

Every institutional framework has a history, even when it introduces something new. Ideas rarely emerge in complete isolation; they arise from deep, structural conversations that began long before us, evolving across generations as societies confront new realities, systemic shocks, and unanswered questions.

The Sundiata Post Model is no exception. Although formally introduced in the previous essay as an institutional framework for media-based knowledge production, its intellectual roots extend much further back. They lie within a long tradition of journalism’s engagement with ideas and society, while simultaneously responding to a distinctly twenty-first-century challenge: the transformation of the newsroom in the age of artificial intelligence, digital knowledge architectures, and global scholarly networks.
The question at the heart of this essay is therefore not whether journalism has ever produced ideas—history provides an unequivocal answer to that. The more critical question is whether the modern newsroom can become an institution deliberately organised to generate original analytical constructs that contribute simultaneously to journalism, deep scholarship, and public policy. That is a different, more demanding question altogether.

Nigeria’s Tradition of the Newspaper as an Intellectual Institution

Long before the emergence of today’s hyper-accelerated digital media, some of Nigeria’s most influential newspapers were already serving purposes far beyond the passive reporting of daily events.
The press architectures established by pioneers like Nnamdi Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo—both of whom I previously discussed, alongside Chinweizu, as members of Nigeria’s rare tradition of framework builders—became foundational vehicles through which sophisticated ideas about nationalism, constitutional development, socio-economic planning, democracy, and self-government entered the public consciousness. Their publications did not merely describe political transformation; they actively generated the conceptual architecture that shaped it.

Crucially, they achieved this by building powerful media infrastructures designed to carry these ideas at scale. Azikiwe did not just publish in Lagos; he deployed a sweeping, cross-regional syndicate anchored by the West African Pilot alongside a network of provincial pillars including the Eastern Guardian in Port Harcourt, the Nigerian Spokesman in Onitsha, and the Southern Nigeria Defender in Warri. Similarly, Awolowo founded the Nigerian Tribune in 1949 as a highly structured institutional vehicle to systematically articulate socio-political theory and regional constitutional destiny.

In his seminal work, Renascent Africa (1937), Azikiwe laid out a broad intellectual and ideological vision that extended far beyond the immediate horizon of standard journalism, charting a course for mental emancipation and African self-determination. A decade later, Awolowo’s Path to Nigerian Freedom (1947) demonstrated how a publisher and institutional thinker could systematically articulate a rigorous, structured constitutional vision for a developing nation.

This historical experience reminds us that journalism in Nigeria has never been confined solely to stenography. At critical turning points in the nation’s history, newspapers operated as the primary intellectual laboratories through which society debated its structural future.

This tradition of intellectual leadership through journalism is not merely of historical interest. In The Sunday Stew essay mentioned earlier, ‘The Insecurity Triad: Azikiwe, Awolowo, and Chinweizu — Nigeria’s Elite Class of Framework Builders’, I argued that Nigeria has, on rare occasions, produced public intellectuals who moved beyond commentary to construct enduring analytical frameworks. Azikiwe and Awolowo exemplified that earlier tradition, while Chinweizu demonstrated that independent conceptual innovation could continue outside formal state institutions and conventional academic structures. The present essay extends that argument by asking a different question: can the contemporary newsroom itself become an institution deliberately organised for systematic framework building and knowledge production?

Yet, an important distinction must be recognised between that era and our contemporary challenge:
The Nationalist Press primarily advanced political ideas, anti-colonial mobilisation, and national aspirations.
The Sundiata Post Model represents a shift from ideological mobilisation to systematic institutional knowledge production. It asks whether an independent newsroom can generate original analytical constructs capable of standing up to the rigorous validation of the global academic ecosystem while serving active policy discourse.
The distinction is subtle, but fundamental. It marks the evolution from political journalism to scholar-journalism.

Journalism and the Life of Ideas

The structural relationship between journalism and ideas extends well beyond regional borders. To understand the global intellectual foundations of this model, we must reconcile two complementary traditions of public thought—both of which proved invaluable in shaping the conceptual foundations of my Trinity of State Decay (TSD) theory.

In framing the mind dimension of the Money–Land–Mind dynamic of the TSD, I found the works of Walter Lippmann and Hannah Arendt particularly illuminating, insightful, and enriching. Few journalists have shaped modern thinking about public communication as profoundly as Lippmann. Throughout his six-decade career in American journalism, he demonstrated that journalism could become far more than a chronicle of events; it could serve as an instrument for decoding how societies acquire knowledge, construct public opinion, and navigate increasingly complex realities.

In his foundational classic, Public Opinion (1922), Lippmann demonstrated that journalism could contribute not merely rapid information, but macro-level interpretation, permanently altering how we view the relationship between media, knowledge, and public policy. It is this Lippmannesque understanding on how information is filtered, misperceived, and understood that informs the epistemic foundations of the TSD.

From a different, deeply philosophical tradition, Hannah Arendt, a political theorist and independent scholar whose ideas reached wide audiences through public intellectual magazines and cultural journals, devoted her life’s work to understanding the structural anatomy of politics, authority, institutional decay, and the conditions that make collective civic life possible.

In The Human Condition (1958), Arendt examined human action, public space, and the enduring value of disciplined conceptual inquiry in explaining political reality far beyond the fleeting nature of immediate headlines. Her profound insights into the erosion of institutional authority and the fragility of the public realm provide an important philosophical foundation for understanding the Trinity of State Decay’s vectors of systemic fragility.

Although operating within vastly different institutional environments, Lippmann and Arendt represented complementary pillars of intellectual rigor:
One demonstrated journalism’s unmatched capacity to shape and democratise public understanding.
The other demonstrated the enduring value of rigorous, uncompromised conceptual thinking regarding public life and the human world.

Together, they illuminate an important institutional possibility. If journalism can generate immediate public understanding, and disciplined inquiry can generate enduring concepts—as demonstrated by their influence on the conceptual foundations of the Trinity of State Decay—might there exist an institutional framework capable of integrating both traditions within a single, independent newsroom?

That synthesis is the exact intellectual domain of the Sundiata Post Model.

An Abuja Newsroom and a Contemporary Question

The Sundiata Post Model emerged not from an insular academic department, a government research institute, or a foreign-funded policy think tank, but from an independent newsroom in Abuja. That geographical and operational fact is highly significant.

The framework did not begin as an abstract theory searching for practical application. It emerged from journalism itself—from the lived, daily experience of reporting, investigating, analysing, and reflecting on the severe structural forces shaping Nigeria and the wider Global South.

Over time, The Sunday Stew gradually evolved beyond a weekly opinion column into a platform for systematic, empirical inquiry. Through that deliberate evolution emerged a succession of original analytical frameworks:
•The Insecurity Triad: A conceptual framework explaining how kidnapping (Money), banditry (Land), and terrorism (Mind) function as mutually reinforcing dimensions of contemporary insecurity, generating parallel systems of violence, governance, and authority;
•The Trinity of State Decay (TSD): A macro-theoretical formulation explaining how the interaction between the Institutional Mirage, the Shadow Order, and the Money–Land–Mind dynamic drives the decoupling of formal sovereignty from effective state authority, and
•The Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI): An indigenous, multidimensional measurement framework designed to quantify the extent to which effective sovereignty has decoupled from formal state authority across subnational territories.

What gradually became apparent was that these were not isolated intellectual exercises. They were the deliberate products of an emerging institutional philosophy developed through the Sundiata Post Intelligence Unit (SPIU).

More importantly, these constructs did not emerge as a single research project conceived in advance. They appeared sequentially, each responding to new empirical observations while simultaneously expanding the analytical capacity of the newsroom itself. The Insecurity Triad provided a structured lens for understanding the interconnected dimensions of insecurity. The TSD extended that inquiry into a broader theory of institutional authority and governance. The DSI subsequently translated those theoretical insights into an operational framework capable of empirical assessment. Viewed together, this progression revealed something larger than the individual frameworks themselves. It demonstrated that the newsroom had begun to develop an internal capacity for cumulative knowledge production, with each construct building upon and extending the intellectual foundations laid by its predecessor.

The fundamental question therefore shifted from “What new framework has been developed?” to “What kind of newsroom structure makes the systematic development of such frameworks possible?” The answer is the Sundiata Post Model.

A New Institutional Proposition

The Sundiata Post Model does not argue that journalism should become academia, nor does it suggest that scholarly research should migrate from the university to the newsroom. Instead, it advances a new institutional proposition:

The Core Proposition: An independent media institution can systematically integrate high-velocity journalism, original qualitative research, conceptual innovation, and global scholarly dissemination within a single institutional framework, contributing simultaneously to
informed public discourse and the international knowledge ecosystem. The Sundiata Post experience demonstrates the practical viability of this proposition.

This proposition reflects neither a rejection of journalism’s traditional role nor an attempt to merely imitate academic institutions. Rather, it represents a strategic institutional adaptation to the changing architecture of knowledge itself.

In an era when global digital repositories, artificial intelligence discovery layers, academic networks, and news organisations increasingly intersect, the traditional boundaries separating journalism from formal knowledge production have become entirely permeable. The Sundiata Post Model seeks to explore what becomes possible when those boundaries are approached not as rigid barriers, but as unprecedented opportunities for intellectual sovereignty.

The historical journey from Azikiwe and Awolowo to Lippmann and Arendt reveals a long-standing, symbiotic relationship between journalism and ideas. The Sundiata Post Model does not seek to replicate any of those legacy traditions perfectly. It seeks to answer a contemporary institutional question:
What becomes possible when an independent newsroom deliberately organises itself as a primary knowledge-producing institution?

The answer begins with philosophy. The next essay examines structure.

Trust is sacred. Stay seasoned

•Dr. Max Amuchie is a Scholar-Journalist, Media CEO, Lead Researcher at the Sundiata Post Intelligence Unit (SPIU), and an Expert Member and Peer Reviewer at ScienceOpen. He is the architect of The Insecurity Triad framework for African security analysis as well as the Trinity of State Decay theory, and the Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI)—original 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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Don’t jump to conclusion! *Umahi speaks on mysterious death of female students!

Published

1 day ago

July 11, 2026

Whirlwindnews

In a quick riposte on Saturday, Dave Umahi, Minister of Works, has cautioned Nigerians to be circumspect in the manner they react to the story of the death of a female student in his home in Ebonyi State, warning against the temptation of jumping to conclusion.

Conveying his position on the highly-volatile matter through Francis Nwaze, his spokesman, Umahi, former Governor of Ebonyi State and a key figure in the government of President Bola Tinubu, said caution was needed to enable the police conduct unfettered investigation into the matter.

It was his response to breaking of how one Mary Habila, a female physiotherapist reportedly died in his palatial home at Uburu, Ohaozara Local Government Area of Ebonyi State, on June 27, hours after arriving the day before.

Nwaze, a Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, specifically cautioned against speculations by “tale bearers,” while conveying the Minister’s shock over the matter and his eagerness for the authorities to get at the root of the matter through forensic investigations.

He wrote in the statement: “The attention of the Media Office of the Honourable Minister of Works, Senator Engr. David Nweze Umahi, has been drawn to a publication by a publication concerning the unfortunate passing of Miss Mary Habila in Uburu, Ebonyi State, alleging that the circumstances surrounding her death were shrouded in secrecy.

“The Honourable Minister received the news with profound shock and sadness and has since extended his heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family. For the avoidance of doubt, immediately the unfortunate incident occurred, appropriate emergency steps were taken. Medical personnel, including the Chief Medical Director of the David Umahi Federal University of Health Sciences, Uburu, were contacted without delay, while the Nigeria Police was promptly notified in accordance with the law.

“Following confirmation of Miss Habila’s passing, the Honourable Minister personally received her parents, conveyed his sincere condolences, and advised that an autopsy be conducted to scientifically establish the exact cause of death. At the time, however, the family declined the recommendation.

“It is important to clarify that Miss Mary Habila and Miss Anita Baski are employees of the David Umahi Federal University of Health Sciences, Uburu, who had been on secondment to the Federal Ministry of Works as physiotherapists for the past three years until the unfortunate passing of Miss Habila.

“Following the recent developments and in the interest of ensuring that the truth is established beyond doubt, the Honourable Minister has again reiterated his position that an autopsy must be conducted. He remains convinced that this is the most credible and responsible path to resolving all questions surrounding the unfortunate incident.

“We therefore urge the public to exercise restraint, refrain from speculation or premature conclusions, and allow the relevant authorities to carry out their responsibilities without interference. At this difficult time, our thoughts and prayers remain with the family of the deceased, and we pray that God grants them the strength to bear this irreparable loss.”

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BREAKING: Mystery death! *Female student dies a day after arriving Umahi’s home!

Published

1 day ago

July 11, 2026

Whirlwindnews

The circumstances that led to the sudden death of Mary Habbila, a Nigerian female student died in the Uburu, Ohaozara Local Government Area of Ebonyi State, home of Dave Umahi, Minister of Works, has now thrown the entire household and environs into serious quandary.

SaharaReporters, which first broke the revealed that the incident, which happened since June 27 this year, has been shrouded in secrecy, with both the Ebonyi State Government and the state police command maintaining silence over the matter.

The incident, the report, added, took place barely a day after Habbila and another woman, Anita Baski, both from Kaduna State, were reportedly brought to the minister’s residence, triggering a police investigation, with the case transferred from the Ohaozara Divisional Police Headquarters to the Ebonyi State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID) in Abakaliki.

Habbila and Baski reportedly arrived at the minister’s residence on June 26 to “attend” to him, only for Habbila to be found dead inside the residence the following morning under circumstances investigators are still trying to establish.

Police sources were quoted by the paper as saying that Jonathan Bawado, a police officer who serves as Senator Umahi’s Personal Assistant and previously worked as his Aide-de-Camp (ADC) during his tenure as Governor of Ebonyi State, alerted medical personnel after Habbila was discovered unresponsive.

Subsequently, a doctor and an ambulance were dispatched to the residence, while Tobechukwu Godwin, Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP) Divisional Police Officer (DPO) of Ohaozara Police Division, was notified of the incident, the report said, adding that at the hospital Chihurumnanya Alo, a Professor and Consultant Public Health Physician, Infectious Diseases Specialist and Chief Medical Director of the David Umahi Federal University Teaching Hospital (DUFUTH), Uburu, was also alerted about the incident.

The police who subsequently conveyed Habbila’s body to a mortuary, were said to have handed over the identification tag attached to Habbila’s to the Ebonyi State Police Command by the said DPO, as part of the ongoing investigation.

SaharaReporters, quoted a senior police officer, with knowledge of the case as saying: “The case has been transferred to the State Criminal Investigation Department in Abakaliki,” but, however declined to provide further details, citing the ongoing investigation.