Columns
What proof does Dele Farotimi need?
By Sunny Igboanugo
Let me start this story with a digression. All the same it’ll be relevant and tied to the main import of the subject matter. It happened some decades back. Then yours truly was the Correspondent of The Guardian in Enugu. But I was quite influential – as influential as journalists in those days were – a small man in a powerful garb. Working with The Flagship of Nigerian journalism made you even more so – an important man. Its identity opened steel doors and elevated you to sit at table with the high and mighty, who not only respect you, but fear you too.
But much as I operated at that top level, again to emphasise, not by my power, but on the wings of that powerful medium, I didn’t entertain myself with the seducing thought that I had arrived at the port of destination for the Nigerian big man. I still recognised where I truly belonged. That place was with the people
So, I could safely say I was at the centre of activities, not only in that state, but even much of the South East in general given the strategic place of Enugu. In fact, my office at Number 23 Edinburgh Road, was the accurate example of what the late Igwe Osita Agwuna depicted to be the picture of palace of a true king. Such a palace, he said should never be surrounded with a wall, to enable both humans and spirits have free ingress in and egress out.
I remember the likes of Asisi Asobie, the President of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), who used it as their war room to plot their battles with Umoru Gomwalk, then Sole Administrator of the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) – one of the many outlandish features of the Sani Abacha junta, arguably, Nigeria’s most despotic and brutal military leader.
Politicians, visiting and resident, professionals, visiting and resident – all manner of people strolled in, individually either to meet and greet or engage in other businesses. Labour leaders, students and their leaders, injured citizenry – everyone came to meet and greet, lay their complaints, submit their petitions or engage in other businesses.
That is how I came across the story I’m about to narrate now. Sometime within this period, Enugu was awash with some of the most bizarre tales, ever conceived and contemplated by human mind. It was a period of mindless police brutality. It came in different forms, shapes and sizes. Many of them came to my table as victims sought solutions.
In one instance, one of my cousins came to my office one afternoon, highly agitated. What was the problem? A squad of policemen swooped on their compound the previous night and picked up two of his elder brothers, he narrated, tears welling up. What did they do? Nothing! Police just sighted them sitting idly in front of their house and dragged them into their vehicle and sped off.
Immediately, I ascertained where they were being detained, I set off. At the Abakpa police station, the DPO, put up the usual deadpan no-nonsense expression – their entry point for business. His story was that my cousins were raided at a “dark spot,” where they were smoking Igbo. For evidence, he called on one of his men to bring the “exhibit.” Soon an empty can of shoe polish was produced. Opening it, the DPO displayed stubs of wrapped, half-finished hemps.
Of course, I wasn’t a novice. I understood the picture clearly and what he was driving at. But I was also prepared. I betrayed no emotions. In my mind I was already calculating the number of times the same exhibit would have been on display in so many other cases. So, my next line was to ask what would be the next step.
Can I take them on bail? That was my next move as I decided to play along. I knew what to expect toeing this line, having been a customer in terms of how many times I intervened in other similar cases. I could see the self-induced anger. I wasn’t showing the right attitude expected of one whose wards were criminals. After all he had shown me the evidence in the stubs of Indian hemps, which was supposed to convince me to that effect. I was too relaxed and confident instead of being scared, diffident and panicky.
I watched him flare up and go into self-induced rage. As he vibrated on top of his voice, almost accusing me of being their patron in crime, I just stood up and walked out of his office. The unschooled would have started begging. That pretended anger was supposed not only to cow, but to deflate me and set me on for the next thing – negotiation.
I simply went upstairs to see the Area Commander who was a friend of the media and particularly my personal buddy. After giving me the usual chummy welcome, he simply burst into hearty laughter halfway into my narration of the encounter downstairs. You no tell am who you be? I knew and my friend knew that I understood everything. There had been so many debates and encounters between us about the subject matter for him not to understand where I was coming from.
He simply put a call to the supposed angry DPO and invited him to the party? I could see the shock in his eyes as he walked into the office to witness the hearty, convivial atmosphere between the man he had just walked out of his office and his boss. You no know Sunny from the powerful Guardian? Sunny is our friend o. Na him dey help us fight crime now!
That did it. I not only left that office with my cousins, the supposed criminals much later, I left as a friend of the same man, who had almost called me a patron of criminals just some hours earlier. There was no need for us to push the subject. All of us knew that no crime was committed. I agreed with my new friend that profiling was part of crime-fighting – his drift and excuse for his previous action. I also agreed on the enormity of crime and the need to employ peculiar solutions in peculiar circumstances to fight crimes. I just had to agree – just for peace to reign.
Each of us knew the true story. He knew I didn’t believe him. It would have been a different story if I wasn’t from the powerful Guardian, with a friend upstairs. With someone else, that allegation could have stood and those “exhibits” in the shoe polish can would have counted. In fact, it could have graduated from smoking Igbo to armed robbery or any other imaginable crimes, for which those my cousins could have added to the list of Awaiting Trial Mates in some prison somewhere if they failed to do the needful.
Those exhibits stood in so many other numerous cases as proofs against several victims that were so unlucky at that time. The case I just narrated, is one of the countless other cases that came in different shapes and forms at that time. Imagine a case in which policemen would hire a commercial bus, arrive at a bus-stop and pick passenger, only to discharge them at police stations as criminals.
Those who could not afford the prescribed amount – N500, N1,000 or N5,000, depending on the going price for the day imposed as bail fees, simply became true criminals and were detained permanently. Nobody even had the heart for pity to free anyone – you’re just a commodity – too bad if you had no money – your fault, not theirs.
I won’t be surprised if many of them are still in prison till date, victims of trumped-up charges. It was when I was so inundated with multiple complaints in this regard that I upped the ante. One day I decided to see the police commissioner. Unlike the Area Commander, the CP was not truly a friend, but unlike the DPO, he was also not uncouth or unfriendly either.
In the paper I filled, I had deliberately tagged my purpose for the visit: Police Brutality in Enugu. It was after a long back and forth, questions and answers, arguments and counters, that the police boss, told me what I’m about to share with you now, my compatriots, which I believe is quite germane in what we are contending with as a country today, at this moment – evidence!
Here is what he said. Hope you have the heart to contain it. Laugh or cry, if you would! “If you truly want to be a patriotic citizen, there is only one way to help the police,” he said. I waited. Then the bombshell. “If you see any policeman bullying anybody taking bribe or engaging in any fraud, drag him to me and see if I won’t punish him.”
I simply stood up, looked hard into his face and walked out. Of course, I took in the smirk in his face and the smile playing at the corners of his lips. They spoke more than words. They were signs of triumphant expression. He believed that he had won the argument and defeated me, his opponent. Now imagine me, an ordinary, bloody civilian dragging a policeman with a gun, probably high on something, by his trousers to his boss to prove that was taking bribe. Tell me the difference between that and jumping from the last floor of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.
This is the case of Dele Farotimi today. The mantra in certain quarters since the palaver with the fiery activist erupted on December 3, when he was spirited away from his office in Lekki part of Lagos, is that he must prove his case that the Nigerian judiciary as an institution is rotten. Many of those elevating this mantra to a deafening din, know that the institution is as rotten as the bloated stomach of a dead dog. Yet, they sing along.
They pretend they didn’t hear Ahmed Bulkachuwa – that Senator who regaled the whole world through the Senate chambers during the 2023 valedictory session about how he “encroached on the freedom and independence” of his wife. They pretend they did not understand that the man was simply relating his hand in making his wife, a judge, who later rose to preside over the Court of Appeal to bend backwards to skew justice, just to “help” his colleagues.
They probably did not hear Rochas Okorocha, another Senator, who also pled with Godswill Akpabio and Ahmed Lawn at the same forum to teach him the magic that made them return to the Red Chambers. They’re probably struck with Mongolian Idiocy Syndrome, not to know what the ex-Imo governor and their colleague was driving at was pointing to the manifest corruption in the judiciary – the same crime for which Farotimi now his neck on the guillotine.
Recall that Akpabio, now Senate President and Lawan, each contested against President Bola Tinubu in the All Progressives Congress (APC) from the National Assembly and against the backdrop of a clear law barring them from contesting any other election within the same election period, returned to contest for the same chambers. Has anyone explained that magic Okorocha, Senator from Imo State sought yet?
Less than 24 hours after the Supreme Court verdict on the 2023 presidential election, Justice Musa Dattijo Muhammed, only next in command to then Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Ayo Ariwoola, captured almost the same thing Dele did, only that he did not mean it when he said that the judiciary leadership stank, but was only saying that it didn’t smell roses. So, they are in search of evidence.
Just like that police boss that demanded of me to drag corrupt policemen to him before he could take the required action to save the citizens of Enugu from their nightmare, Farotimi’s adversaries, many of them the lawyers through whom the massive corruption in the judiciary has been caried out are also searching for the same thing – Proof! They, like the Enugu police boss know what they seek is almost impossible.
They know the only way Farotimi could prove the rot is to perhaps round up the culprits at the crime scene. In other words, they want him to drag the corrupt, bribe-taking policemen to that police boss. How would he do that? You could always also recognise the same triumphant smirk, mimicking that police boss as I left his office in utter disgust as they demand of the same EVIDENCE, today. Just like that day!
Well, by their standard and prediction, Dele’s day with the jailor is assured. But by the time Dele walks into the jail house, chained arms and legs, because he had no evidence, the mantra of these antagonists would have been complete. So, their joy. But to many others, the clanging sound of the chains would also be a reminder that Nelson Mandela and many other global greats, also walked this path, heads unbowed.
Interestingly, many of those who cheered and jeered to the melody from the chains, as he took that walk to Roben Island, in South Africa, also lined up to witness a different melody as the same man waltzed through the same path, 21 years after, this time, without the chains – the melody of thunderous ovations and the clatter of excitedly eager tongues. Though some of them were denied the chance of witnessing it, their children represented them. Only this time, they watched with heads, bowed!
So, it might be with Dele Farotimi. Those who cheer and jeer today in triumphalism, should not be quick to forget that even in Nigeria, there are a surfeit of examples to authenticate that inscription on the body of that lorry labouring through the ditches on Lagos-Benin expressway – No Condition is Permanent. So might it be with Dele. The irony of life!
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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