Ordinarily no one in Nigeria, particularly from the South East and more particularly Anambra, would have batted an eyelid when Charles Chukwuma Soludo, Governor of Anambra State, announced on Thursday, May 8, 2025 that he and his party, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), had signed in to the re-election bid of President Bola Tinubu in 2025 in preference to Peter Obi, his brother.

This is because anyone who has a bit of matter in his brain knows that such a gambit is useless. Not even a complete imbecile or those struck with Mongolian idiocy, would believe that such a puerile undertaking would add anything to the political fortunes of the President or diminish the latter, ceteris paribus. Not even Tinubu, reputed to be the wise man of Nigerian politics would.

If indeed, it is all about the votes of Anambra people, Tinubu ought to know that Soludo’s outing is nothing but pure deceit. If it is about people going to the polling booths in 2027 to cast their votes, Tinubu would lose in the governor’s immediate family, not to talk about his kindred, Isuofia town, Aguata Local Government Area and Anambra. What would he tell an Anambra man to cast his vote for Tinubu?

This was tested in 2023, with the profile of the presidential election of that year, when the governor, who had donated the Anambra Government House for Obi to flag off his campaign, wrote those serial letters, many had considered not only strange but evil against then candidate of the Labour Party (LP). Obi’s outing was enough proof that Soludo, was at best mis-yarning, as some people would say.

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That the governor, has continued on this route ever since, in a manner said to be consistent and symptomatic of many see as pure jealousy seems not surprising. Those tracking his his behavioural trajectory in politics and elsewhere accuse him of being afflicted with the debilitating Pull Him Down (PHD), especially against other Igbo icons. They recall similar beefs with the late Dora Akunyili and even Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, which depicted same unwarranted pattern to that of Obi.

This therefore leads to the second issue, which is the dangerous part – ceteris paribus – all things being equal. What if Soludo decides to prove that he really has Anambra votes in his palms? What if he wants to keep to the apparent deal he must have made with the President to deliver Anambra to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the election. How would he achieve it?

Surely, Soludo’s move is seen as aimed towards achieving two purposes – to further diminish, undercut, and subvert Obi, his last but one predecessor, whom he obviously loves to hate and of course to serenade Tinubu into supporting him in the November 8 governorship election where he hopes to secure his own second term.

Ordinarily, pundits believe that the election would be a walk in the park for the governor, not really because he has delivered on his electoral promise of transforming Anambra to the Dubai-Taiwan of Nigeria – he has failed woefully on that score – but because the alternative is most probably the APC, which, to his people, is akin to the axiomatic frying pan to fire.

But the caveat here is the true intent of either Tinubu or the APC. Should they decree that Anambra must be captured as Umaru Ganduje, the National Chairman of the party, once said, it would then mean that even if the entire votes on election day were emptied into the APGA box Soludo would still lose. The votes would simply be donated to the APC to produce a different outcome and the heavens would not fall. Anambra would not be the first example.

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That the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has become so useless that it has donated itself as the electoral arm of the APC is a sad development, known to the goat and fowl – a point Tunde Bakare, the bold, indomitable, fire-eating Pastor and Serving Overseer of The Citadel Global Community Church, was only too quick to make only recently. On the other hand the Nigerian judiciary, which could have saved the governor otherwise as it saved Obi on different occasions, is today, in a class of its own in terms of independence or lack of it.

So, nobody would actually blame Soludo for harbouring a legitimate fear, especially in a political milieu peopled with politicians with scant regard for personal integrity, courage of conviction and determination spirit to doing the right thing and fail rather succeeding on the wrong path – where university professors, hitherto known for maintaining the strict pathways of societal integrity and iron-cast philosophy of whistle-clean lifestyle – have now become Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) for rigging elections – something unthinkable in the past.

Again, the issue is what happens if the governor gets the help, he appears so desperate about? Would he take the route of allowing the will of his people prevail in 2027, which would naturally conduce a known outcome of failure for Tinubu, that would in turn be interpreted as betrayal or would he pursue the path of assisting the President capture Anambra willy-nilly? Again, what if he takes the second option.

That is our major concern in this obvious political macabre dance. In its political history, the state had had its own share of politically-induce turmoil. The historic Mkpo junction battle between the Ikemba Front and Jim’s Vanguard in the second republic, one of the sad episodes, which darkened the people’s political history, took place in the present Anambra.

Even in its current dispensation, the state also became a broiling arena for political absurdities, when some renegades practically set it on fire in several desperate moves to enforce their evil will on the people. It included physically springing a sitting governor from his seat in broad daylight to up the ante on the limitless level the anti-democratic forces could go.

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This is what must not be allowed to repeat. Anambra must not be allowed to descend into a theatre of war again. Soludo, in his pitch, had explained that it was the tradition of APGA to support any government in power at the national level, obviously pointing to Obi’s government, which supported then President Goodluck Jonathan.

This is pure deceit decorated as fact. It is stranger than comparing apples to oranges. Before the 2011 presidential election, Jonathan had stayed close to two years in office, within which he showed manifest love for Ndigbo in general and Anambra in particular, such that his middle name Ebele, was interpreted as Igbo. Obi simply keyed in to the singular sentiments and flowed with the prevailing tidal political sentiments at the time. This shared relationship which endured till he left office in 2015, was crowned with such iconic events like the full national honours burial given to the late Ikemeba Nnewi, Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu.

Comparing the two scenarios, is not only fraudulent and immoral, but an insult to the feeling of Anambra people and to wit, entire Ndigbo, to whom Tinubu and his cohorts at the APC have dealt the harshest, cruelest and most sadistic hands, post-civil war. Were Ojukwu to have died today, he would have been buried like any other person. The Humphrey Nwosu case is ample evidence.

From Ben Nwabueze to Mbazulike Amaechi, from George Obiozo to Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu and Chukwuemeka Ezeife, countless iconic Igbo leaders, including the selfsame Soludo had at one point or the other pleaded for the release of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), some of them leading delegations to the Presidential Villa to prostrate in supplication, all to no avail.

This is at the time when other agitating contemporaries of Kanu, similarly incarcerated, have since regained their freedom – at the time when hundreds of known terrorists arrested for slaughtering their victims like animals and taking videos of the bestial acts were not only set free, but handed handsome packages to boot.

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This is what Soludo is comparing with the Jonathan times. What a shame! What inconsiderate, thoughtless and insensitive gambit! What unkind cut. Even Willie Obiano, his predecessor, had the presence of mind to avoid this uncanny, if not fatal move his successor is making today, in the face of a similar scenario in 2019.

We must warn for the umpteenth time, when the water is still at the toe level, Soludo must not toy with the idea of truncating the will of the people in 2027. That year is two years ahead. So, it is enough time for him to plan another strategy to thank Tinubu. That he has hurt the feelings of the people in his unwarranted attacks on Obi remains apparent. He must not stretch it to leave their blood on the floor.

As for his recompence, it may not come in November. Provided that INEC is there to take care and do the needful, his return, this time to the glittering multi-billion naira government house he has just completed is guaranteed, particularly with the assurance he received from his august visitor last Thursday.

But surely, it is said that the wind of justice grinds slowly, but surely grinds. When Zik was complaining about the charade that was the 1983 presidential election and the late Chuba Okadigbo described it as the ranting of an ant, the late Owelle was credited to have left these words: “History shall vindicate the just and God shall punish the wicked and confine them to the scrapheap of unforgotten tyrants!”

Last December, Emmanuel Obimma, the popular Catholic priest, of the Ebubemuonso fame, described Soludo as possessing a reprobate spirit. It is one of the most damning verdicts of the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, especially coming from a cleric of such high standing. It is up to the governor to totally earn that tag or erase it. Need more be said?

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“As we can see and understand, Nigeria’s situation is bad. The more the immorality and corruption of a nation, the more the nation sinks into chaos, insecurity, conflict, discord, division, disunity, depression, youth restiveness, confusion, violence, and underdevelopment.

“That’s the situation mostly in Nigeria in the reign of Baba-go-slow and Emilokan. The failing state status of Nigeria is confirmed and glaringly indicated and manifested for every honest person to see through the consequences of the level of our pervasive corruption, mediocrity, immorality, misconduct, mismanagement, perversion, injustice, incompetence, and all other forms of iniquity.”

This was Olusegun Obasanjo in November, 2024. The former President who till date holds the trophy of the longest-serving Nigerian leader was speaking in his keynote address at that year’s edition of the Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum held at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA, where he warned that Nigeria was fast assuming the unenviable status of failed state.

Now, could anyone accuse Obasanjo of being hollow or bereft on issues concerning Nigeria? He not only led the country for three years as military Head of State, but as civilian President for another eight, totalling a record, 11 years. History also records him as holding the rare record of the Nigerian leader to supervise the first military to civilian transition and the first civilian to civilian transition.

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So, when he warned that Nigeria was in danger, he spoke from a position of authority. Obasanjo, no doubt has a bird’s eye view of Nigeria. The evidence of this is more apparent in how he reputedly ran the most balanced model of governance since 1999, where issues of nepotism, tribalism or favouritsm remained nonexistent or at worst, insignificant.

He had warned further: “State capture is one of the most pervasive forms of corruption. What is happening in Nigeria—right before our eyes—is state capture, where public institutions are subject to undue influence from vested interests.”

What other demonstrable evidence could anyone be looking for than what Tinubu has turned Nigeria since May 29, 2023? At the time Obasanjo spoke in November last year, he had relied on multiple examples. Today, Tinubu’s long list of impunity has continued to stretch. More bizarre and outlandish democratic bad behaviours practically spraying raw pepper in the eyes of those who love the concept and savour the allure of freedom of choice are replete.

The sad story of Rivers State where Tinubu imposed an illegal State of Emergency is enough evidence to jolt anyone still in doubt to reality that Tinubu’s pitch to pocket Nigeria has reached to its final destination. No doubt, it is only a matter of time before Nigeria becomes another Lagos, where the state sleeps and wakes up on the whims and caprices of the President, even after he left power some 18 years ago.

In all these the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) – the body charged with conducting major elections in Nigeria, is the main culprit. That it has produced the deadly chemical to kill the Nigerian democracy is putting it mildly. The 2023 presidential election remains the perfect example to this. This was an election, Nigerians under the heavy yoke of then President Muhammadu Buhari, had sought to make a major statement.

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Home and abroad, they had mobilised themselves using the social media. Luckily, Buhari, either because he was no longer a candidate and was therefore willing play the spoils-sport or he was actually imbued to leave behind at least one positive memory to his name, had assisted the process by signing the 2022 Electoral Act into law.

With that document, introducing a large dose of electronic elements into the electoral system through the Bimodal Verification System (BVAS) and the Independent Result Viewing Portal (IREV), Nigerians, especially mobilised to taking their destiny into their hands by creating their New Nigeria.

Unfortunately, as they were banking their new wave of electoral revolution on the hope of a flawlessness of these devices as had earlier been tested and proven, they never took into account the evil machinations of the same INEC, which oiling the wheels of its own wicked devices.

The result of that unholy scheme was made manifest on the morning of the presidential election of February 23 of that year, when they were told that their votes could not be uploaded on the IREV portal – signally the abrupt end of the credibility of the electoral process.

Till date, more than two years after, Mahmoud Yakubu, the INEC Chairman, who told the world that development was a result of technical glitches, has not been able to explain that term and how it came about. It was the dashing of hope for  both Nigerians and global spectators who had believed the turning point had come and the African Giant had finally woken up.

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Of course, what is left by that damning outcome was sealed by the judiciary, where judges audaciously asked for the scrotums of the white-headed ants from litigants. Not even one dissenting voice came from them, as was in the past, at least to pacify the people.

So, with INEC and the judiciary, both obviously compromised, crashing the foundation on which the huge electoral edifice the people had hoped, every other thing came cascading down like a pack of badly-arranged cards, such that since then, not a single election has passed the test of integrity.

The system, having returned to the Hobbesian era, where might was right, politicians behaving true to type, have upped the ante, now pushing the envelope by “winning” all the local governments in their states, which would soon be extended to winning every ward and then, 100 per cent of the votes, to complete the madness.

So, in the main, we are not worried that Sheriff Oborevwori, Governor of Delta State on Wednesday collapsed the entire Peoples Democratic (PDP) structure in the state into the All Progressives Congress (APC). That has long been expected. He knows his reason and Nigerians too know – crooked INEC – compromised judiciary – simplicita!

Bur we daresay, let the entire governors of Nigeria with their supporters join forces with the APC to back Tinubu, that boat will plunge into the sea like the Titanic. The outcome of the 2023 presidential election has proved that much that people remember many things before casting their votes.

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Further we say and further we maintain, no amount of political machinations, plottings or compromises would suppress the weight of the Tinubu disaster, aptly captured as T-pain if the present hunger, deprivation and unwarranted deaths pervade the land.

Again, we believe that even if the entire vault of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is moved into the streets in 2027 to buy votes, it will neither obliterate nor diminish the impact of Nigerians wincing under the brunt of being among the highest in the world’s misery index.

Peter Obi, without a governor backing him, as presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), in that 2023 election proved to the entire world that party structure pales into insignificance when faced with the determination of the people.

Our take therefore is that Nigerians must today worry more, not about the number of governors jumping into the APC ship, but how to ensure that 2027 does not repeat the electoral robbery where Obi’s supposed 15 million-plus votes were reduced to six million and the 22 states he supposedly won pruned down to mere 12.

Remembering the words of Tunde Bakare while warning about the dangers of Tinubu’s ‘Motor Park politics’ and impact of state capture – “No man is wise enough nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power,” we state that the only way to avert that danger is to stop Mahmoud and INEC, who seem to have tactically remained silent amidst the entire commotion, while waiting for 2027! They are the real danger! Not Tinubu! Not the governors!

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His mien betrayed his inner heart. There was no way anyone could miss it – Pain – anguish – sorrow – confusion – fear! – All registered in the face of Caleb Mutfwang, Governor of Plateau State, as each word tumbled out that Tuesday, April 8, 2025, while appearing on Channels Television.

Clearly, Shakespear obviously did not have the likes of the governor in mind when he wrote: “There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face!” For in this particular case, that popular expressions from Macbeth, one of the writer’s most celebrated epics, was proved as fallacy rather than true.

A guest on Politics Today, a public affairs programme on the popular television network, the governor practically placed a mirror to expose every bit and pieces as well as the intricate fibres of his inner soul, as he detailed the harrowing ordeals of how merciless terrorists, unleashed mindless onslaughts on communities in the state, decimating his people in the process.

The most pungent part of that account, was how, in Bokkos  local government alone, 64 communities were displaced, with the terrorists succeeding in chasing out original owners, renaming and occupying their communities.

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Hear him: “To be honest with you, these attacks are not new. They’ve been going on for the last 10 years or more. It is just that they were never brought to national attention. In Bokkos particularly, Bokkos is one of God’s gift to Plateau State – beautiful landscape, great mineral deposits – but it is a very treacherous terrain. These communities that were recently attacked were part of the communities that were attacked in 2023. But they survived it, they rebuilt themselves. The Ruwi community that was first attacked, lost about 17 people in 2023.

“But they bounced back to show you the resilience of the people. Now, if this sort of attacks has been going on for close to 10 years, it tells the story that there is a deliberate, conscious attempts to clean out populations and for what reason other than to reoccupy.

“As I’m talking to you, there are not less than 64 communities that have been taken over by bandits on the Plateau between Bokkos, Barkin Ladi and Riom Local Governments. They have been taken over, renamed and people are living there conveniently, on lands they pushed people away to occupy.

“These are things we’ve been trying to embark on dialogue to make sure that these people return to their communities. But because of the proliferation of arms, which has become quite alarming – and I’m talking now, not about arms, but real, sophisticated arms in the hands of non-state actors. It has become more challenging for communities to be able to live in peace.”

But, here then was the catch. In this horrible narrative, the governor never brought himself to name the culprits of these attacks. He could not summon the courage to do so, despite his ostensibly full knowledge of story. Every effort to pressure him to name them, was futile.

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See how he tried to dodge that bullet: “I can tell you in all honesty that I cannot find any explanation other than genocide, sponsored by terrorists. The question is who are the persons behind the organisers of this terrorism? This is what the security agencies must help us unravel. We must come to a point where we know the sponsors, because it is not just the work of ordinary people.”

Now, therein lies one of the major issues in the Plateau crisis and to a large extent that of Nigeria. No doubt, Mutfwang, not only knew the culprits, he also knew how and where to find them. But he would never bring himself to name them – he would never dare! The consequences would be too great for him. But, in place of clarity, he chose political correctness, while trading fear for courage and sacrifice.

In fact, Solomon Dalang, former Minister of Sports, who is also an indigene of the state and equally affected by the obvious siege, had some hours before, made the coast very clear. At a separate interview, he said the culprits were not only known, but their locations as well.

His take was that those who should arrest the crisis decisively – to pursue, decimate and wipe the killers out – had either deliberately refused to do so or were compelled to turn the other way. Otherwise, with the right intention and political will the menace would have since been over and forgotten.

What other evidence could have captured this audacious conclusion from the ex-Minister than the 64 communities Mutfwang spoke about?

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If, as the governor said, these communities are actually in existence, with those who took them over living in them undisturbed and unperturbed, what other evidence does anyone need to fathom the agenda for the mass killing and for the inaction by higher authorities?

Why then dance and skirt around the issue? Ordinarily, the expectation is that Nigerian soldiers would have moved in, dislodged the invaders and restored the land to the original owners, while those so extricated would be profiled, and the guilty among them brought to book according to the law.

So, why is this not happening? Could it be that the spiritual dimension many people have talked about is truly at play after all? Yes! Not a few people have raised the Igbo question in the entire saga. Voices, understandably, from the South East, adducing this interesting, but germane angle, point to the horrendous activities of the progenitors of today’s victims in creating the Nigeria where their children and grandchildren have been trapped.

They describe both physical narratives and mental pictures of the ghoulish massacre of Ndigbo during the pogrom in Northern Nigeria, particularly in those areas currently witnessing these bloodbath, as evidence of the connection of the past and present, showing obvious similarities in their graphic constructs.

From Borno to Adamawa to Zamfara and Katsina – from Kaduna to Plateau and Benue, horrible depictions of morbid decapitation of human beings, portend the same or similar imprimatur of the gory pictures being spread in the same areas today, even several decades after.

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The eerie images of young men with placid, emotionless faces – made so by years of carrying out the same task – making deep burrows in the ground and throwing what remained of the kits and kins, into them like dead animals killed by a deadly disease, replicate the same pictures of war-era Igboland after each bombing of markets, churches, hospitals and other public places while the dismissive and utterly bland, if not lame explanations by the military governments then to the wanton massacre, mimic the current stance of the Nigerian authorities to today’s persistent human carnages.

Indeed, many of the purveyors of this spiritual angle narrative, infer further, that the fact that those who supervised the bestial onslaught against Ndigbo, are alive today to see the same slaughter visited on their own kits, is evident that the current situation is a payback to atone the cries of the Igbo victims.

They contend that those loud cries and silent pleas of the victims – the pregnant women, whose bellies were torn open and their unborn babies ripped off – the young ladies corralled into leprosy colonies and forced to be raped by the inmates – the young children with their heads severed – their fathers pulled out from train coaches and vehicles and thrown into rivers – leave ghostly images of unsettled spirits refusing to rest until fully avenged.

There is no way of determining this spiritist angle. However, whatever picture or narrative – spiritual of temporal – the reality remains that the Plateau crisis is a very clear phenomenon. The essence, motive and impetus are captured in those 64 communities.

As the issue is neither complicated nor complex the solution is also straightforward. That it is not resolved yet and likely not to be soon, captures the sad story of Nigeria.

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