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Ajofia in Lagos: One day, Ndigbo will offend ‘Yoruba culture’ by breathing same air
By Sunny Igboanugo
When I first saw the video of one young man on WhatsApp gleefully announcing that the Commissioner of Police in Lagos had barred Ajofia Nnewi masquerade from coming into the state, my immediate reaction was incredulity. This is not possible, I said to myself. But then…! I remembered that this is a new Lagos.
Yes! This is a completely new Lagos – the Lagos of the All Progressives Congress (APC), where Ndigbo have been confined to a special place – mimicking the Jews in Nazi Germany – targeted before the World War and became the sacrificial animals during its pendency to the extent that six million of them were fed into the gas chamber.
Nobody knows how long the current onslaught will last. But surely, for as long as the APC remains in power in the state and continues to draw the type of strength it is currently enjoying from the national level, there is every reason to fear. Much of what is happening is beyond mere hatred for Ndigbo per se, but a deliberate political strategy and the only way not only the party, but its patrons could survive in power.
So, instead of dismissing it totally, as I would ordinarily have done some 10 years ago, in the old Lagos, before the current blitzkrieg, I sought to first authenticate the story. I began the search and discovered that the source was sequel to a video in The Yoruba Times, quoting a supposed “traditional Igbo man,” as saying that the dreaded masquerade was “making its way into Lagos.”
I don’t know when the said platform being quoted published the original story under reference or when the entire saga started. But the story I found through my perusing the internet, titled: Police bar Igbo masquerade from entering Yoruba indigenous land of Lagos, citing cultural sensitivity, security concerns, published on December 05, 2024, went thus: “The Lagos State Police Commissioner, CP Ishola Olarewaju Olawale, has prohibited the Ajofia Nnewi Masquerade from entering Lagos for the Igbo Festival, citing concerns over public safety and potential breach of peace.
“This decision was made during a meeting between Igbo stakeholders in Lagos and the police commissioner. Recall, The Yoruba Times reported a video of a traditional Igbo man who said the masquerade, Ajofia Nnewi, is making its way to Lagos December 12, 2024.
“The Ajofia Nnewi Masquerade, notoriously referred to as the “Evil Forest,” holds significant cultural and traditional value in Igbo society. However, its proposed appearance in Lagos has been met with strong opposition from various Yoruba communities in the state, who have expressed concerns and reservations about its presence.
“CP Olawale explained that residents, including indigenes, were uncomfortable with the masquerade’s presence in Lagos after a group boasted about unleashing mayhem. He played a video recording of the masquerade performing rituals, which raised suspicions about their intentions.
“The police commissioner emphasized that every tribe has its own masquerade, operating within their tribe, and that Ajofia is an Igbo masquerade that should not come to Lagos State, which is another tribe.
“Eze Nwachukwu, responding on behalf of Ndigbo, thanked the CP for the meeting and acknowledged the message. Despite Eze Nwachukwu emphasis on peaceful nature of the festival featuring the Ajofia Nnewi Masquerade in Lagos, indigenous people of the state have expressed strong objections to its appearance, citing concerns that it could pose a risk to individuals who are unfamiliar with the traditional significance and cultural context of the masquerade.
“According to report, In Igbo mythology, the Ajofia Nnewi Masquerade is believed to possess spiritual powers, which can be unsettling for those who do not understand or share the same cultural beliefs. Furthermore, the masquerade’s name, “Evil Forest,” evokes a sense of mystery and foreboding, which can be intimidating to those who are unfamiliar with its cultural significance.
“The Ajofia Nnewi Masquerade is traditionally not performed in front of women, which can create an air of mystery and exclusivity around the masquerade. The masquerade’s performances often involve elaborate rituals and ceremonies, which can be perceived as “dangerous” or “-threatening” by those who do not understand their cultural context.”
I still don’t understand the story. None of the basic questions someone not conversant with it would ask was answered. What is the event the Ajofia is supposed to attend on December 12, by whom and for whom? Those details were not provided either.
But on the other hand, I ask myself, would the purveyors actually go to the extent of using the name of the Commissioner of police to concoct such a tale assuming if it is false? Therein lies my confusion. But the authenticity or otherwise of the story is not really the important issue. What is, is the spirit behind it.
That is where I shall concentrate. Pray! When has Lagos transformed into such a provincial, straight-jacket, air-tight environment that residents, particularly the non-Yoruba and more particularly the Igbo ethnic community, now have to watch their every step and all utterances in order not offend their “benevolent, gracious and accommodating” hosts? Do they need a special approval in matters of like this?
When has Lagos left the realm of an open, robust, thriving, global entity, which like the iroko tree, inhabits all manner of animals acting in their true, natural and undiluted characters, to conduce an ecosystem of individual and interdependent firmament?
When have Accra, Cairo, Abidjan, Nairobi, Johannesburg, and other cities across Africa, with which Lagos used to sit at the table left it behind for it to grovel for crumps underneath, by being led to assume this stiff, clumsy and insipid toga? Is this the idea of a mega-city or has that idea been abandoned? Pray! When has Lagos become a city for the Yoruba and no longer a potpourri, melting pot of Nigerian – nay global space?
At what point did it lose its original texture? How long will it last and who stands to gain in the end if the current patrons succeed in this backward agenda? Now, let me tell you more about Lagos, with this Ajofia issue in mind. I have the authority to say so, because I saw Lagos with my own eyes, as a child and now an adult.
There have been numerous Ajofias that bestrode the streets of Lagos with residents – young and old – Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Bini, Efik, Idoma, et al, trooping out in excitement to applaud and celebrate. I say so, because I was one of those who were in those streets. There was one as tall as a tree, taller than Ajofia, said to have come from Kwale, a community in Delta State. There was one of Ijaw origin. I saw a dangerous one from Igala in Kogi, said to be very dangerous. We all saw them here in Lagos.
So many Ajofias, have performed at Tafawa Belewa Square, the centre of Lagos. So many have done so at the National Stadium, at the National Theatre, now The Wole Soyinka Centre for Culture and the Creative Arts. So many have done so at less fanciful big arenas. They had done so in the presence, sponsorship and excitement of the leaders of Lagos, some of whom are still alive and in authority today. I say so because I’m a witness.
In other words, I can authoritatively say that Ajofia coming to Lagos is not something new. What is, is that Lagos is gradually transforming into something else. A tiny group of people obviously enjoying a lavish endorsement of high authority and boasting same, have seized the space, making their own rules, In those rules Ndigbo have become sworn targets, some sort of guinea pigs for a nihilistic agenda.
This group, I’m not afraid to say, is tiny and infinitesimal. But it is highly dangerous. They neither represent the original or present Lagos, nor the Yoruba. Mostly those the train has left behind, they find accommodation under a fertile ground of the APC in the state. Between them is a symbiotic relationship where they become footsoldiers for the APC, which now finds them as convenient and willing tools – foot-soldiers in the quest to remain in power, in return for all manner of favours, including the alluring dream of possible seizure of Igbo properties and businesses in future.
To underscore this fact of its political nature, this new, but dangerous trend, no doubt came to the fore in the run to the 2015 general elections, when the Oba of Lagos, Rilwan Akiolu, threatened to drown the Igbo in the Lagos Lagoon, if they failed to key into the APC agenda of continuing in power. That was the first time Ndigbo were mentioned by name openly.
Now, there has been numerous interpretations – one of which was that Kabiesi, was simply entertaining himself with his friends – the Igbo, as monarchs are wont. After all, a king is permitted such pastime – a king does as he wishes – is a popular. But the danger therein is that many seem to have taken it to heart upped the ante to what it is now.
Suddenly, a new phenomenon under the cloak of “Yoruba culture” is now being used to adorn what is clearly a political agenda. In subsequent elections, that “joke” from Kabiesi, has become the anthem of a certain established mindset. Last year, in the run to the general elections, videos and audios of Ndigbo being invited, where they were warned that it is offensive to think or act independently of their host, who have been so “generous” and “accommodating” to them.
There is an “accommodating spirit” to which everyone of them must obey as a sign of “respect” in return for this kindness. Mind you, this injunction doesn’t apply to any other ethnic group. The Hausas with an appreciable size, almost as large as the Igbo are exempted from the same injunction for obvious reason.
Now, what is that respect? Simple answer! Vote the APC. That is the only way to live and operate in Lagos. Of course, the consequences of not obeying that injunction have since resonated in the weeping, wailing, mourning and grinding of the teeth at the Alaba International Market, Ladipo Auto Spare Parts Market, Balogun Market and many other places where the Igbo reside or conduct their businesses, in the last few months. The Ajofia Nnewi story, could only be a further escalation of the sad trend to press home the point.
Unfortunately, though sad on all sides, based on the possible outcome now and in the future, these tiny patrons of the evil agenda do not seem to realise that they are backing the wrong horse. Their choice of the Igbo, makes the plot a futile dream and a lost battle. If only they could allow a little bit of history to guide them.
Now, even if they manage to recreate the Rwanda scenario by either annihilating the entire Igbo or chasing them out of Lagos; even if they succeed in taking over those thriving businesses, the edifices at ASPANDA, Alaba, Ladipo and Balogun; even if they seize all the beautiful houses and everything Ndigbo own in Lagos, which serves as the major attractions to many of those in this sustained plot, what next?
That is the question? Haven’t Ndigbo been annihilated before? Haven’t their properties been seized before? What’s the result today? How long would those businesses last before those hoping to seize them blow the proceeds? How far would the edifices last in their hands before they become decrepit and useless for lack of ideas and resources to maintain them?
Okay, assuming, but not conceding the possibility of Ndigbo not voting in Lagos again, because if offends “Yoruba culture,” does it guarantee the retention and sustenance of the APC forever as they desire. Of course the answer is obvious – Nada! Was it Ndigbo that made the party lose so woefully in the presidential election of last year, before the resort to a new strategy?
Yes! Take Ndigbo out of the equation totally, the APC will still lose in a free and fair election in Lagos and elsewhere, as they have been losing for several years now. The reason, is also not farfetched. Elections are a function of the mind. Voters naturally get weary of going in one direction.
The relay race between dominant parties in many climes where votes are rarely manipulated gives impetus to this factor. Just a few days ago in Ghana, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has just won power back from the National Patriotic Party (NPP). A few weeks earlier in the US, it was the Republicans that displaced the Democrats through Donald Trump. African National Congress (ANC), in South Africa is fast losing grip of power despite its historic place in the country.
It is only in countries like Nigeria that people express such “love” for their oppressors such that they had to endure such immense pains in the 16-years of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Not until Barak Obama and his same-sex-loving government came to their rescue, Nigerians would probably have continued to “vote” the party till date and even till the 100 years its leaders had predicted it would be in power.
Bottomline: Enough of the scapegoating! For this is what all the Ajofia story is all about. There should be a limit to targeting a people. Someone must quench this appetite of the APC, lest the world would be dealing with another sad story.
Even in the #EndSARS violence that engulfed the entire Nigeria in 2020, some people still found a way to try and pin the Lagos edition on Ndigbo. Apart from the burning of the BRT buses, they were accused of invading the Iga Idunganran palace of the Oba. But for the intervention of some “right-thinking” leaders, aided by video evidence clearly contradicting the false narrative, who knows what would have come out of that ugly episode.
No doubt many are still at work pushing the envelope. But it won’t change anything in a people who by all standards and on all accounts are the only visibly True Nigerians. Furthermore, let a thousand Bayo Onanugas rise to warn Ndigbo to steer clear, let ten thousand more MC Oluomos prevent them from voting, APC in Lagos is on a slaughter slab already, as a natural course of action.
Ajofia Nnewi has traversed the farthest end of the earth. It has performed in Europe and America. No doubt it is quite fearsome. Yet it is an entertaining masquerade. It is not even the biggest or most dreaded Igbo masquerade. There is the Ijele, known for its majesty and beauty. There is the Okwomma and Mgbadike, depicting valour and strength.
Though hitherto restricted to their original Igbo domains, today, they have become global symbols of national culture, exported beyond Nigeria for tourism and theatre. Even Flavour Nabania, Nigeria’s iconic singer, invites masquerades on stage during his performance in Nigeria and abroad without offending anyone’s culture.
So, the APC goons in Lagos, cannot stop their dwindling fortunes by targeting Ndigbo. They have blamed them for the Ogunpa River overflowing its banks and for the flooding in Lekki. Ndigbo have been blamed for their wives not conceiving or failure to get erection in the other room. Soon, they will make it an offence for Ndigbo to breathe the same air with them, because doing so, would contaminate the “Lagos culture.”
Sad enough the plot instead of being confined in its proper place in Lagos APC, is being packaged and sold as a Yoruba agenda. No. Check again. There is no other Yorubaland exhibiting this trend. Many Yoruba compatriots, practically flinch at the idea. They see it as a total anathema and offensive to the true, open boisterous Omoluabi spirit their people have popularised over time.
Sadder day will come the day the evil plotters successful sell that package. That will be the tragedy. Luckily however, Nigerian history has proven that every political situation no matter how odious has a shelf life. The APC will not be different. Its expiration may it not be too far. In fact, it looks closer than farther. Then, Lagos will return to what it used to be – Eko pabere rara – Lagos doesn’t take nonsense at all!
My name is Sunny Igboanugo and I’m The Tiny Voice!
By MAX AMUCHIE | The Sunday Stew
In the last two weeks, Parts One and Two diagnosed a structural mutation in the Nigerian state: a dual sovereignty system in which the Institutional Mirage performs authority while the Shadow Order exercises it, sustained by The Insecurity Triad as a mechanism of mutual reproduction.
What remains is the hardest question in political theory: not what is happening, but whether it can be reversed.
The answer is yes—but not through reform.
Systems that reproduce decay cannot be repaired within their own logic. They must be structurally interrupted.
The Trinity does not collapse. It is displaced.
From Ritual Governance to Peripheral Presence
The first reversal targets the geography of illusion.
The Institutional Mirage is concentrated in the symbolic centre—where governance is performed through summits, communiqués, and administrative ceremony—while dissolving at the periphery where authority is actually tested.
This produces a distorted state: visible in Abuja, absent in the borderlands.
To reverse the Trinity, the state must abandon Ritual Governance—the substitution of performance for presence—and return to the empirical occupation of territory.
This is not military occupation. It is administrative presence as sovereignty.
A state exists not when it speaks in the capital, but when:
a child attends a functioning school without paying a parallel tax of fear;
a farmer harvests without negotiating with non-state authority;
a dispute is resolved by a recognised court faster than an armed intermediary.
Governance is not restored by declaration. It is restored by continuity.
Where state presence becomes routine, the Shadow loses its monopoly on predictability.
From Pacification Bargaining to Sovereign Integrity
The second reversal confronts a deeper failure: negotiated sovereignty.
The state has increasingly drifted into a system of Negotiated Sovereignty sustained through what may be described as Pacification Bargaining—the purchase of temporary calm from rival authority structures through ransom logic, amnesty arrangements, protection payments, or informal accommodation.
This is not strategy. It is dependency disguised as pragmatism.
Every bargain strengthens The Insecurity Triad by:
monetising abduction economies;
legitimising territorial extraction;
reinforcing the Shadow’s role as a negotiating sovereign.
The result is a system of self-financing violence in which each concession funds the next cycle of coercion.
Pacification Bargaining does not resolve insecurity. It institutionalises it.
Each transaction deepens the perception that coercion is profitable, territorial pressure is negotiable, and sovereign authority is conditional rather than absolute.
Sovereign recovery therefore requires rupture in this economy.
The state must reassert a non-negotiable monopoly over:
taxation;
adjudication;
legitimate force.
Integrity, in this context, is not moral posture. It is institutional refusal to participate in markets of coercion.
A state that bargains over its coercive authority is not managing insecurity—it is outsourcing sovereignty.
The Critical Break: Dismantling the Insecurity Triad
To dismantle The Insecurity Triad is to break the loop between performed sovereignty and enforced sovereignty.
This cannot be achieved through security operations alone, though coercive force remains an essential and non-negotiable instrument of restoring empirical sovereignty. It requires something deeper: the reconstruction of institutional credibility in the very spaces the Institutional Mirage has abandoned.
It requires the state to stop performing governance and start delivering it. To stop negotiating the terms of its own authority and start enforcing them.
To recover the map—not in abstraction, but in detail: name by name, community by community—that armed actors are actively redrawing through coercion, taxation, and enforced renaming.
Dismantling the Triad is therefore not only a security task. It is a reversal of political geography itself.
The Cartographic Re-occupation of the Republic
The Shadow Order does not only occupy land. It reorganises meaning.
Through what may be understood as Constitutional Erasure, it renames territories, restructures local identity, and replaces the symbolic map through which authority is recognised.
Once this occurs, sovereignty is no longer contested physically alone—it is contested cognitively.
Cartographic Re-occupation is therefore not symbolic politics. It is structural restoration.
It requires three coordinated acts.
First, administrative re-anchoring: the immediate restoration of functioning institutions—schools, clinics, courts, and local administration—under continuous state presence.
Second, symbolic restoration: the reassertion of original geographic and civic identities through formal public renaming and constitutional recognition.
Third, cognitive consolidation: governance must cease to appear as intervention and become the default condition of life.
The state is not restored when it returns to territory. It is restored when territory returns to the state’s cognitive map.
Intellectual Closure: The State After Fragmentation
The deeper insight of this architecture is that sovereignty in Nigeria is no longer singular.
What has emerged is a fragmented order in which authority is distributed between competing logics of governance—one performed, one enforced, both partially functional, neither complete.
This is where African political thought clarifies the structure beneath the surface.
The logic of adaptive survival described by Jean-François Bayart explains why the state persists even as it weakens. Achille Mbembe explains how survival itself becomes managed rather than guaranteed.
Together, they clarify the central claim of the Trinity: this is not collapse. It is reorganisation.
Closing Movement
Nigeria does not face a singular collapse of authority. It faces a structured competition between performed sovereignty and functional sovereignty.
The Mirage still speaks in the language of the state.
The Shadow still governs in the language of necessity.
Between them, society survives by navigating two competing logics of order.
The question is no longer who governs.
It is whether governance itself can be reassembled into a single coherent structure.
The Reversal Condition: Sequential Sovereignty Restoration
The Trinity is reversible, but only in sequence.
Protection must be restored before compliance can shift.
Compliance must shift before territorial credibility stabilises.
Territorial credibility must stabilise before institutional authority can move from performance to function.
Any inversion of this order produces relapse.
The system is not resistant to reform. It is resistant to mis-sequencing.
The Trinity reverses only when sovereignty becomes empirically enforceable again through the sequential reconstitution of protection, compliance, and territorial credibility, thereby disrupting the mutual reproduction loop between the Institutional Mirage and the Shadow Order sustained by The Insecurity Triad.
Where this sequence fails, the loop does not weaken. It adapts.
The Social Contract Is Not Broken — It Is Being Replaced
There can be no social contract in a state where the sovereign performs authority it does not possess, negotiates with rivals it cannot defeat, and watches—from the polished corridors of Abuja—as the names of its own communities are erased from the landscape it claims to govern.
The conventional framing of Nigeria’s crisis describes a broken social contract: the state has failed its obligations, and the people are paying the price.
That framing is not wrong. But it is insufficient.
A broken contract implies a single agreement that has lapsed—and the possibility, in principle, of renegotiation and restoration.
What the Trinity of State Decay reveals is something more structural.
The social contract is not merely broken. It is being replaced.
In the spaces where the Institutional Mirage does not reach—in the northwest, northeast, and Middle Belt, in renamed villages and abandoned farmlands—a rival contract is being written.
On rival terms. Under rival authority. With rival consequences for those who refuse to sign.
The Shadow Order does not offer freedom. It offers a different captivity—one organised around extraction, fear, and the brutal clarity of power that does not pretend to be something it is not.
Within its own logic, it is internally consistent and therefore predictable.
And in conditions where protection becomes uncertain and uneven, predictability itself begins to function as a substitute for legitimacy—not as consent, but as adaptation under constraint.
The Institutional Mirage, by contrast, sustains a different form of instability: the unpredictability of protection, the inconsistency of enforcement, and the performance of authority that does not reliably translate into outcomes.
It is this asymmetry—between predictable coercion and unpredictable protection—that accelerates the silent transfer of compliance from formal sovereignty to rival order.
Conventional state failure frameworks assume a linear erosion of capacity.
The Trinity departs from this by demonstrating a dual-state condition in which formal and rival sovereignties coexist, interact, and reinforce decay.
Nigeria is not a failed state.
It is a state in the grip of a Trinity.
The Definition
Drawing on the full architecture of the foregoing analysis, I now offer a formulation of the Trinity of State Decay theory:
The Trinity of State Decay is the decoupling of a state into rival sovereignties: the Institutional Mirage, which performs authority without fully possessing it, and the Shadow Order—or competing Shadow Orders—which exercises de facto authority in spaces the Mirage has vacated, both sustained by The Insecurity Triad as the mechanism of their mutual reproduction.
The Trinity intensifies where the Mirage fragments into competing centres of performed authority, accelerating the transfer of empirical sovereignty to rival structures.
The Trinity reverses only when sovereignty becomes empirically enforceable again as a stable condition of governance.
This condition is not defined by the mere presence of the state, but by the alignment of three realities: protection must be enforceable, compliance must orient toward the state, and territorial authority must remain continuous.
Where these diverge, sovereignty fragments.
Where they converge, sovereignty reconstitutes.
Recovery is not repair or return. It is the production of a new equilibrium in which the Mirage collapses into function, the Shadow is displaced, and The Insecurity Triad loses its organising role.
This condition is produced through sequence: protection must precede compliance, compliance must precede territorial credibility, and territorial credibility must precede institutional function. Any inversion produces relapse; where the sequence holds, the loop breaks.
While derived from the Nigerian case, the Trinity offers a generalisable framework for analysing state decay in contexts where formal sovereignty persists alongside entrenched systems of rival governance.
Stay seasoned.
•Concluded
•Dr. Max Amuchie is the CEO of Sundiata Post and architect of The Insecurity Triad Analytical Framework, and the Trinity of State Decay theory. He writes The Sunday Stew, a weekly syndicated column on faith, character, and the forces that shape society, with a focus on Nigeria and Africa in a global context.
X — @MaxAmuchie | Email: max.a@sundiatapost.com | Tel: +234(0)8053069436
Godwin Obaseki, former Governor of Edo State was the first to raise the alarm. He rang the bell in the most dramatic manner in that video that went viral on the heels of the 2023 presidential election. It was about the impending tsunami confronting the Nigerian political space – the Peter Obi phenomenon!
The forum the ex-governor spoke was supposed to be a family meeting – a kitchen cabinet affair, where he interacted with the inner caucus of his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in his state. But he ended up not only alerting the nation, but passing the message about the new reality in the must pungent, direct and unobtrusive manner – something new has come – Peter Obi.
Whether it was meant to be a warning, an admonition or simply a subject of amusement – as the governor seemed tickled while delivering it – Obaseki’s words in that outing hit the right spot in national consciousness across board. The young, the old, the healthy and the infirm, all heard it clearly. Now whatever they did individually remains a different kettle of fish.
In that encounter, Obaseki had told his audience how, despite being a governor and the engine room of the PDP in the state, his own family had turned against him with all children and other young members enlisting into the Obidient Movement and how that was true of every other family in Nigeria.
Now, was Obaseki’s depiction false? Didn’t it come to pass on February 25, 2023, when Nigerians went to the polls? If Yakubu Mahmoud and his INEC had not contrived that technical glitches arrangement to abjure the mandate of the people in line with the grab, snatch and run philosophy of the present beneficiary of that obvious heist, Obi certainly would have been Nigerian President.
Had that happened, Obi’s would have been not only a clean and wholesome mandate, untainted by the paintbrush of rigging or other electoral infamies bespattering previous efforts, it would have been a national mandate – delivered by the people of Nigeria – likened only to Moshood Abiola’s June 12, 1993 presidential election victory.
In fact, so pan-Nigerian was the Peter Obi effort that Nigerians of all ethnic and religious persuasions came together and on their own, in clusters, within housing estates, in villages and communities, contributed money to fund their individual campaigns to promote the project of getting him to the Aso Rock Villa for the nation’s number one job.
Nigerians abroad – Yoruba – Hausa – Ibibio – Jukun – Igala – Tiv – Kalabari – Igbo – Edo – made special arrangements to return home with the sole purpose of not only promoting the agenda, but actually making the idea a reality by casting their votes for him.
Obi was the only one out of the lot that contested the election in 2023 that secured the endorsement of virtually all the ethic organisations across Nigeria.
Afenifere – the pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation – the Middle-Belt Forum (MBF) from the North Central – Pan-Niger Delta Forum PANDEF – for the South South region and Ohanaeze – their South East counterpart – all came together to declare their support for his presidential ambition.
Now this is the same person that some naysayers are labouring too hard, day and night to closet inside the straightjacket of ethnicity and religion. From Reno Omokri to Daniel Bwala to Bayo Onanuga and others controlling working from the Presidency to their counterparts at the Blantyre Plaza APC secretariat in Abuja – they continue to trumpet the spurious, bogus and fake narrative of Obi’s ambition being steeped in some sort of Igbo agenda.
Ironically, out of the entire lot, the selfsame Obi, is the only one who came out to boldly declare that nobody should cast a vote for him because he is Igbo, rather, they should do so because they are convinced about his ability to deliver on a new Nigeria of their dreams. No other had the courage to make such a bold declaration.
Surprisingly, even Wole Soyinka, one of Nigeria’s most iconic figures – a central voice in national and international affairs – Nigeria’s man of the century – the Kongi himself – who had hitherto shot himself to a position of a super being – of immortality – beyond reproach – without any credible reason even by his own conjecture – called the Obi ambition – an IPOB agenda.
That underscores the seriousness of the entire scenario. But interestingly, no matter how they try to trumpet it, their efforts have continued to mimic a snake striking at the shell of the tortoise with the aim of infusing its killer poison.
Their frustration not only hinges on this apparent failure but their current desperation too! The Obi brand has continued to soar beyond comprehension. So, when you hear the echoes of ethnic baiting, religious smears or other primordial sentiments, just know they are trying to increase the tempo of the din! Such a frustrating task!
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!
“This is Lagos!”
How many of you have seen this sign that introduces you into Lagos? Whoever coined that expression is highly ingenious because the essence of those three words ensconces a lot within its bowels.
It could mean that Lagos is a land of opportunities, where a man who started off as a truck loader at Iddo Motor Park, could discover opportunities to become the next billionaire around. There is a surfeit of examples.
It could also be introducing you to Nigeria’s Centre of Excellence and the pride of the nation where high-stake activities from the signing of multi-billion-dollar transactions conducted in the penthouses of Ikoyi and Victoria Island and the beautiful ambiances of the Victoria Garden City (VGC), Lekki, Banana Island and other high-brow places mimic other big cities across the globe.
Yet, it could also be a warning to the new entrants to the fact that Lagos is not for the faint-hearted, the indolent and imprudent. In other words, Lagos is not a place to loose-guard, as it is said in the local parlance, but a city where street-wisdom is as important as existence itself being the major factor and fine line between success and failure.
For me, the third example is the most relevant and essential here, because it is quite germane to the matter at hand – the current political scenario in Nigeria – regarding Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar. Obi’s defection from the African Democratic Congress (ADC) to the Nigerian Democratic Congress (NDC), is a demonstrable example of street-wisdom at play and an emphatic message of its potency!
Since Sunday when it came to the fore that Obi had dumped the ADC and moved to the new party alongside Rabiu Kwankwaso, his new-found ally, the Atiku camp has remained on the offensive, raising the battle-cry – BETRAYAL!
They say Obi abandoning the ADC ship and porting to the NDC represents a betrayal of not only Atiku and the coalition arrangement but the battle to end the calamitous governance President Bola Tinubu – its main goal. How laughable!
Dino Melaye – Obi detests the heat of a kitchen and prefers an air-conditioned one. If he couldn’t face party primaries, having not participated in any right from his APGA days, how would he face the presidential election?
Dele Momodu – I would have wished that Obi would have waited to test his popularity in ADC…Obi did not leave because of Atiku, he left because he knew he lacked the capacity to take on Atiku.”
Even Babachir Lawal – a hitherto Obi supporter, fired his own arrow – Obi is shifty! A politician who fears elections, have no business being one. He doesn’t want to participate in primaries. He prefers a consensus candidate and that consensus must be him!
All the well-choreographed mantra, you hear from these guys, bespeak more of lamentations at missed plot to capture Obi into Atiku’s inextricable ADC web than reality of Obi lacking the sturdiness, durability and gusto to face tough battles.
In fact, Obi has nothing to prove in terms of his ability to fight. He proved this in the 2023. So by this outing alone the pale, trembling coward image they’re trying to sell to the world through this desperate narrative, falls flat on its face. But there’s more!
Talking about battles and the heat of the kitchen, this was the same Obi that stood through the courts to snatch his stolen mandate after it was snatched by the hounds in the 2003 governorship elections in his home Anambra.
This was the same Obi that sacked Chris Ngige in 2006 to retrieve his mandate and Andy Uba in 2027 in the tenure interpretation case – two seating governors in a space of one year. Who else has achieved this? This was the same Obi, who fought and returned to office after he was impeached from office as a governor.
Isn’t it laughable that it is the same man they claim is afraid to fight? What Obi is afraid of is his name being soiled in any way. It was for the reason of maintaining a clean name that he would rather yield to the pain of impeachment than offer bribes to the members of then Anambra State House of Assembly to spare his job.
Obi simply showed the hounds in ADC the import of that inscription – This is Lagos. It showed how much he understood its implication in terms of street-wisdom. How could Atiku and his men believe they could outwit Obi in that manner?
It’s like urging Ishi-Udene, my village dibia to sit at a beautiful table underneath which you buried a drum of boiling oil. He would have seen the danger in his divinity pot long before you concluded the plot.
Obi, fighting for the ADC ticket is akin to that dapper-looking bank manager, decked in designer suits, alighting from his sleek automobile and engaging those red-eyed, broken-tooted, scared faces at Mushin, Agege or Ajegunle bus stops, just to prove his toughness. What’s the use?
Now, picture this! You ran into a crowd and out of curiosity, went to observe, only to discover your spouse, clothes off, drenched in mud, broken bottles in hand, in roforofo fight at Oshodi bus stop!
Would you excuse your spouse even if provoked into that fight or celebrate the outcome, assuming the opponent was beaten to a pulp and taught a lesson?
For Peter Obi to engage in the ADC battle, it would not only take energy and sweat, it would certainly take away INTEGRITY and CREDIBILITY – the two elements that give essence to the Obi brand.
That would mean committing suicide to polish an ego. That is foolhardiness! The last time I checked, recklessness is the opposite of wisdom. And Peter Gregory Obi is not foolish. He’s a wise man!
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!
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