Columns

Between Alex Otti and Okezie Ikpeazu, who is lying to us?

Published

1 year ago

May 7, 2025

By Sunny Igboanugo

There are few names in Nigeria today frequently mentioned as performing governors. Alex Otti, Governor of Abia State is one of them. The echoes from the din in Umuahia are as loud as the Big Ben, the Great Bell of the Great Clock of Westminster, in the heart of London, which, by the way, chimed for the first time on July 11, 1859.

I haven’t heard anyone list the names of five performing governors in the country without mentioning his name, no matter from what political nuances and convictions. In fact, in most cases, he comes in as number one or two or at the worst, the third position. I have also seen several images, either in form of videos of jubilating crowds of people cheering him to project sites or at other auspicious occasions.

Let me digress. I must confess that I have lost touch with the God’s Own State in recent years. Indeed, I was a friend of the house in the Abia State Government at a point in time. I became a regular face from the time of Orji Uzor Kalu. I was there when the great transition happened, through the Progressives Peoples Alliance (PPA).

In fact, I was so close that I broke the news about the formation of that party, because I was fed the information by the aides of ex-governor, now a Senator. A caveat: I wasn’t particularly close to him. It was more of his aides. I recall it was after a breakfast with him in Lagos arranged by them that they broke news of the new party to me. Don’t forget that, that PPA went ahead to win two states in the South East – Abia and Imo.

Let me confess also my admiration of his politics superseded my interest in his performance in office, because I practically got sucked into his bold, courageous and fire-eating pronouncements and moves on the political scene at that time.

I was not alone. At a point OUK was the new genie of Nigerian politics. I recall that particular scene in 2001 at the Cinema Hall of Hotel Presidential Enugu – how people soaked each other’s sweat just to listen to him. It was his lecture at that year’s edition of World Igbo Day, organised by the World Igbo Congress (WIC), a powerful group propelled by the Igbo intelligentsia based all over the world.

The only person I know, who came close to pulling that unique spectacle was the late Ikemba Nnewi, Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. But not even the Ikemba’s outings at the historic Mkpoko-Igbo forum, to rouse Ndigbo to the issues of the 1995 constitutional conference, considered, one of his most memorable, post civil war, matched the OUK crowd at that event.

Then OUK went ahead to prove his mettle more when he practically pulled off that historic feat of snatching two states from the jaws of the lion the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the political moving train crushing everything on its way at that time. So daring was he that his men practically chased away some of the goons allegedly sent by then President Olusegun Obasanjo to arrest his mother. Who has forgotten that encounter believed to be men of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the gun duel that reportedly ensued in Umuahia?

Is it not terribly saddening today that the selfsame OUK cuts the picture of a beggarly, grovelling, political lackey. When I see him these days, grabbing every opportunity for photo-ups with President Bola Tinubu, who was his classmate at the College of ’99 governors, it convokes a feeling of pity rather than outrage. When I see him, these days swearing on how high he could jump to please, first Muhammadu Buhari, and now Tinubu, I repeat the biblical dirge of Jonathan to Absolom – how are the mighty fallen?

Back to my tale. My last touch with the state and its government, was under Theordore Oji, Kanu’s successor. It was a natural transition from the former boss to the Chief of Staff (CoS). But unlike OUK, whom I connected through his aides, my relationship with Ochendo Global, was more personal than official. But then I lost touch with his government midway, when I left journalism for a while to answer some national callings.

So, to a large extent, I knew what the issues were in Abia quite well from the foregoing. One of them was what to do with Aba. In fact, during a media tour, which was my first visit to the state, reporters had taken OUK on over the sorry state of Aba, the commercial city and the most prominent town to boot. The perennial flooding of the town is such that visitors at Ariaria Market, practically had to swim in and out.

The convenient answers throughout the times the issue was raised, was that the solution was between the axiomatic devil and the deep blue sea. I remember Kalu telling the reporters on that trip that for the problem to go, hundreds of houses had to be pulled down – a politically impossibility – because their owners built on water channels created to evacuate the flood. There was a particular metaphor that captured the gory situation called – Ukwu Mango.

Because of this almost impossible situation, the only solution was to desilt the drainages to create temporary reliefs. Of course, Ochendo Global, did not have a better story either. Now, I don’t know how much the situation has changed and what the new issues are today. I’ve already explained from the outset.

My question therefore. Has that problem been solved or is it that the people have resigned to their fate of finality and no longer regard the nightmare as a problem? If yes, by whom? I want to know because that is where I want to jump in on the current ear-splitting verbal warfare between Otti and Okezie Ikpeazu, his predecessor. In the whole noise of the recent engagement, I’ve heard nothing about that hitherto monumental problem.

Now, it is my contention that whoever of the two that achieved the feat of ending that nightmare, is the true hero of Abia. On the other hand, if that eyesore is still lingering amid the clatter of these bitter tongues none of them deserves any accolade yet as the hero.

Now I come into the main issue that began with that sizzling interview with Rufai Oseni aired on The Morning Show, the breakfast programme on ARISE NEWS, television network. Otti had shocked the world with three major outrageous revelations – that Ikpeazu commissioned an uncompleted government house – left N192billion debt and spent N10billion on a non-existent Abia Airport.

Naturally, only an inanimate object would keep silent, having been so bespattered with the paintbrush of shame, especially with the traction the expose generated across the globe. So, Ikpeazu moved, quite appositely too. Since then, his men have been up and about telling the world how foul a lair Otti is. John Okiyi Kalu, spokesman of Ikpeazu’s government as Commissioner for Information, on the same programme described the governor as high on propaganda and short on performance.

Yet, on Newsnight, another programme in the same station, Eric Ikwuagwu, spokesman of the PDP in the state, was also vibrating, echoing the same sentiment. His own conclusion was that Otti should move on with the business of governance, move Abia forward from where he met it rather than lying to the people.

Now, I ask, why would Ikpeazu commission a non-completed building as completed? Isn’t that fraud on its own without Otti saying so? Kalu’s explanation that his boss deliberately left the uncompleted part, so that the next governor would fix it according to his taste, is puerile. That house does not belong to a particular governor. Yes, if Otti came in and decided to change anything or remodel the house, it would be solely his remit.

Would the UK leave number 10 uncompleted so that the next Prime Minister would fix it or the White House be left fallow for the next President? Such untenable if not uncharitable thinking could only come from places like Nigeria, where people in authority in scant regard to the feelings of the people just utter anything. Imagine!

Conversely, did Otti spend N5billion to fix his own private residence in lieu of moving into the government house? Isn’t that a greater fraud if it ever happened? What would happen in other climes if a governor spent just N1,000 of government money in his private estate? What happened to Boris Johnson? Why did he resign as British PM? Was it not for just sharing drinks at the private garden of his residence during COVID-19 lockdown?

Now, imagine what N5billion could do to that government house. If truly Otti is guilty as accused, he is surely worse than the Ikpeazu. Why should the official residence of a Nigerian governor be more majestic than that of a UK PM? On what basis. Would a Peter Obi spend government money in fixing his private house? Is it that Otti is not a true apostle of the Labour Party (LP), presidential candidate?

Regarding the N10billion audio airport, I find it funny that the only defence from Ikpeazu team is the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), looked into the matter and exonerated the former governor. EFCC? Does that body smell roses itself? If it were such a credible body to be relied on, how many of Nigerian politicians would be walking the streets as free men today? We want to hear a more credible explanation.

This is also true of the debt profile of the state. Did Ikpeazu really leave N192billion debt. Borrowed from where? How? When? These are questions that must also be answered from both sides. Gratifyingly, Otti, the financial engineer he is, claims he is wiping the state clean of the debts. But that doesn’t mean that the public would be denied of the truth.

This is also germane in the celebrated Aba Port Harcourt Road Otti has just completed. Did he actually spend N36billion on the project? If yes, why so. The Ikpeazu team raised a relevant question in this regard to wit: why would a 17 kilometre road in Port Harcourt with a swampy terrain be awarded for N30billion and this one of less than six kilometres, as they claimed, with a more clement topography gulp such a whopping figure?

But come to think of it, why should there be such a sharp difference in the image of the two dramatis personae in this matter? Why would Otti be maintaining his place in the top 11 of Nigerian governors today while Ikpeazu could not even make the reserve bench? Who are these Abia people we see in the streets daily celebrating him like a god? Are the images AI-generated?

I heard Kalu, say that his boss, Ikpeazu deliberately refused to hug the media by choosing the let-my-record-speak-for-me model. Now, has that record spoken? If yes, where? If no, why not? Is the media Otti’s real niche? Is that the advantage he has over his predecessor. Who indeed is high on propaganda and short on performance? Otti or Ikpeazu? Who amongst them fixed the Aba flooding menace? Somewhere lies the lies and the truth as well.

My name is Sunny Igboanugo and I’m The Tiny Voice!

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Columns

The Three-Month Sprint (1): Philosophical Architecture of an Intellectual Trilogy of State Decay

Published

3 days ago

June 14, 2026

Whirlwindnews

Last week on The Sunday Stew, we unveiled the Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI), a quantitative metric I developed as an extension of the Trinity of State Decay. It is meant to be a mathematical instrument for measuring the degree of separation between a state’s juridical sovereignty and its lived reality. I had planned to follow up today with the first instalment of a three-part series on the methodology and indicators of the DSI.

Then, from the middle of last week, there was a development that sent me into a sustained period of reflection.

On Wednesday, Zenodo — the open-access repository developed by CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, and the European Commission — published my 16,315-word theoretical treatise, ‘The Trinity of State Decay (Part 1): Sovereign Decoupling and Rival Sovereignty — A Theoretical Statement.’ On Thursday, Harvard Dataverse, owned and operated by Harvard University, published the same work. On Friday morning, an email arrived from the Social Science Open Access Repository (SSOAR), operated by GESIS — the Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Germany — confirming that they too had accepted, published, and archived the paper.

Late Prof. Edward Said

I sat with that for a while. It is exactly three months since The Sunday Stew made its debut. In those three short months, we have produced an original analytical framework (The Insecurity Triad), a comprehensive theoretical formulation (the Trinity of State Decay), and a quantitative index (DSI). Within the same period, the framework entered global scholarly circulation, and now the theoretical paper has been published by three of the world’s most respected scholarly repositories within seventy-two hours of each other. I found myself thinking about the symmetry of it: three months. A trilogy of original contributions. A triple publication in a single week.
Numbers sometimes carry meaning far beyond arithmetic. This one felt like it was trying to tell me something.

I. The Seed Planted in a Library

When The Sunday Stew was conceived, I did not set out to become a framework architect, a theorist, or an index creator. But looking back, I think the seed was planted much earlier — by accident, in the history section of the University of Calabar library.

I was preparing a term paper on Nigerian history. Our lecturer was the late Dr. Erim O. Erim — a man you had to do your absolute best to satisfy. I was moving along the shelves when I stopped. What arrested me was a name on a spine: Sigmund Freud. His biography. I could not understand what such a book was doing in the history section. I took it anyway, borrowed it, and in one week read it cover to cover.

Of everything I read about Freud’s life, one idea lodged itself in my subconscious and has never left: Freud’s concept of immortality. He defined it simply but profoundly: immortality is being known by many anonymous people. Not a mystical phenomenon, but a psychological and systemic one. It is the act of leaving behind an intellectual footprint so distinct that your ideas are absorbed by millions of people who may never meet you, but who must use your language to understand their own reality.

Freud did not merely write a theory. He changed the global vocabulary. Because of Freud, anonymous people who have never read a page of psychoanalysis use the words ego, subconscious, projection, and defence mechanism every single day. They are operating within his architecture without ever knowing it. That, he argued, was immortality.

I was a young man in a university library who had come looking for Nigerian history and stumbled into a philosophy of intellectual legacy. I did not know, at the time, that I had been given a compass.

•Late Antonio Gramsci

II. The Book C.Don Handed Me

Several years later, when I lived in Lagos, I had someone who was (and still is) a friend, a big brother, and a mentor. The home of C.Don Adinuba — then at Ilupeju — was like my second home. I could walk in at any time. C.Don was the perfect host, and his wife a hostess of uncommon warmth. There was never a dull moment in that house. He knew I loved books, and he is himself one of the most intellectually deep people I have ever encountered.

On one of those days, he pulled a book from his shelf, handed it to me, and said: “Go and read this.” I looked at it. The author was unfamiliar. I asked: “Who is Edward Said?” He replied: “Just go and read the book.”

Representations of the Intellectual — which grew out of Said’s 1993 Reith Lectures for the BBC — turned out to be, apart from the Bible, one of the most impactful books I have ever read. In its pages I first encountered Antonio Gramsci, whose Prison Notebooks has made an enduring impression on my intellectual formation and theoretical development. Said’s argument — that the intellectual’s vocation is to speak truth to power, to represent the unrepresented, and to refuse the comfort of specialisation in favour of the discomfort of genuine engagement — became a way of understanding what journalism, practised seriously, is actually for.

And from Antonio Gramsci, particularly his broad conception of the intellectual, I came to understand that intellectuals are not confined to universities, research institutes, or academic titles. Gramsci argued that intellectual activity exists wherever people help shape ideas, interpret reality, organise knowledge, and influence how society understands itself. Through that lens, I realised that journalism is not merely a profession of reporting events; it is an inherently intellectual vocation.

As a journalist, I do more than gather facts and relay information. I help frame public conversations, interrogate power, highlight social challenges, preserve collective memory, and contribute to the global marketplace of ideas. This understanding deepened my sense of responsibility to society. It reinforced the belief that journalism carries a duty not only to inform but also to enlighten, challenge assumptions, encourage critical thinking, and provide citizens with the knowledge necessary to make informed decisions.

Gramsci’s perspective helped me see that the journalist occupies a vital bridge in the relationship between structured knowledge and public life. The responsibility is therefore not simply to report what happens, but to pursue truth rigorously, interpret developments thoughtfully, and contribute constructively to the intellectual and moral development of society. In that sense, journalism became for me not just a career, but a pure form of public intellectual engagement.

These two books — one stumbled upon by accident, one pressed into my hands by C.Don — formed the philosophical foundation on which everything that follows in this column rests. I did not know that at the time. I know it now.

Late Sigmund Freud

III. The Question That Started Everything

When The Sunday Stew made its debut on March 8th, I initially envisioned a column anchored broadly on faith, character, and the structural forces that shape society, with a focus on Nigeria and Africa in a global context. But the second edition on March 15 inspired our current trajectory. Entitled ‘A Country Without Earthquakes — Yet Shaken by Itself’, it explored the tragic reality of Nigeria manufacturing catastrophic man-made disasters while other nations contend merely with natural ones. The insights that came from writing that piece—drawing heavily from an expansive interview a former colleague and I conducted with the late Professor Jubril Aminu in 2012—inspired the rigorous analytical direction this column ultimately took, beginning with the development of The Insecurity Triad.

At the outset, I only set out to understand why Nigeria keeps bleeding. I wanted to discover why the same communities bury the same dead in the same circumstances decade after decade, while the state issues the same predictable condemnations, commissions the same redundant reports, and recommends the same superficial reforms that are never implemented. I set out, in other words, to do journalism.
What I did not anticipate was that the honest, uncompromising pursuit of that question would eventually produce what the academy calls a macro-theoretical framework—and that this framework would, in time, find its home at Harvard and other top-tier scientific repositories.

The Trinity of State Decay did not arrive fully formed. It emerged from a profound frustration—the frustration of a scholar-journalist who has spent years watching analytical frameworks imported wholesale from external academic traditions fail to explain the immediate reality happening in front of his eyes.
Failed state theory, useful as far as it goes, describes a static outcome. It names the corpse but completely fails to trace the actual cause of death. The Fragile States Index produces superficial comparative rankings but isolates no mechanisms. What was missing was an indigenous framework that could explain the operational process—the structural logic by which sovereign authority fractures and is progressively displaced by rival formations.

The insight, when it came, was disarmingly simple: states do not lose control randomly. They lose it systematically along three specific axes—Money, Land, and Mind. When the state loses its command of fiscal and economic legitimacy, when it loses territorial authority over its physical space, and when it loses ideological and psychological hold over the behavioural psyche of the population, something else moves in. Not chaos. Something far worse than chaos: a disciplined, purposeful Shadow Order, which is often more efficient at its enforcement functions than the formal state it is displacing.
This is what the Trinity of State Decay theorises. Not the mere failure of the state—but the active production of an alternative to it.

The geography of legitimate knowledge production has long maintained a centre and a periphery. The global centre produces the theoretical frameworks; the periphery receives them, submissively applies them, and occasionally pushes back against them in minor footnotes. What is happening right now with the Sundiata Post Intelligence Unit (SPIU)—with The Insecurity Triad already circulating in global academic repositories and the Trinity of State Decay now anchored across multiple institutions—is a clear demonstration that intellectual rigour does not possess a postal address.

The publication of the Trinity of State Decay on global scholarly platforms is not an end point. It is the formal opening of a conversation three decades in the making. If in the months, years, and decades to come, a professor at Harvard, a post-doctoral fellow in Legon, a PhD candidate in Oxford, or an undergraduate in Makerere writing a term paper finds it useful and engages with it, our purpose will have been fulfilled. None of them may ever know me personally, just as I never knew Freud, Gramsci, or Said.

Coda: The Symmetry Completes Itself

I began this reflection thinking about the symmetry of three: three months, a trilogy of contributions, a triple publication. But symmetry, I have come to understand, is not always visible at the beginning of a journey. It reveals itself exclusively in retrospect—which is, incidentally, also how Sovereignty Decoupling becomes visible to those who are living through it.

A young man borrowing a biography of Freud by accident in a university library. A mentor handing him Edward Said across a table in Ilupeju. Several years of frontline journalism asking the same stubborn questions about why our nation bleeds. A column that began as political commentary and rapidly transformed, by structural necessity, into a site of deep theoretical production. And now: Harvard, Zenodo, GESIS-SSOAR, all in a single week.

Three months. A trilogy. A triple publication. And with SSOAR’s confirmation arriving on Friday morning, our overall global archival footprint expands to seven critical institutional repositories when we include the foundational papers of The Insecurity Triad: SSRN, Harvard Dataverse, Zenodo, SocArXiv, SSOAR, ResearchGate, and Academia.edu. The symmetry, it appears, was not done with me yet.

The Trinity of State Decay is now available on Harvard Dataverse (doi:10.7910/DVN/ZQWEM7), Zenodo (doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20580627), SSOAR (nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-110533-8), ResearchGate, and Academia.edu. Read it. Push back against it. Apply it. Find its limits. That is exactly what it is there for.

Trust is sacred. Stay seasoned.

•Dr. Max Amuchie is a Scholar-Journalist, Media CEO, and Lead Researcher at the Sundiata Post Intelligence Unit (SPIU). He is the architect of The Insecurity Triad framework for African security analysis, the Trinity of State Decay theory, and the Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI)—original, indigenous analytical frameworks for understanding, categorising, and measuring conflict, state decay, and sovereignty in the Global South. He writes The Sunday Stew, a weekly syndicated column on faith, character, and the structural forces that shape society, with a focus on Nigeria, Africa, and the Global South in a changing world.

X (formerly Twitter): @MaxAmuchie | Email: max.a@sundiatapost.com | Tel: +234(0)8053069436

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Columns

Atiku-Amaechi tag-team: An indication of ADC’s hideous plan for Obi

Published

2 weeks ago

May 31, 2026

Whirlwindnews

Have you been watching the drama happening in ADC? I have, and I have been thoroughly amused doing so. Have you been following the television appearances of Rotimi Amaechi recently? Did you see how the former Governor of Rivers State had been vibrating, assuring of his victory at the party’s presidential primaries?

Did you hear him boasting how he was going to vanquish Atiku Abubakar, former Vice President and now the presidential candidate of the party, indicating that ADC members would prefer him over the seventh-time election-contesting Nigerian record holder, because of his (Amaechi’s) records?

Did you see the vehemence with which he warned that television host, to “stop that nonsense,” for suggesting that he could end up as the VP candidate to the same Atiku? Did you see how he rolled his bulging eyes and how angry he sounded?

Did you read the statement of the former Minister of Transportation, rejecting the outcome of the ADC presidential primaries, even before it was finally announced on Wednesday.

Now, pan the camera to the Abuja home of the same Amaechi – by the way – I could swear the ambiance could compete with the palace of the Sultan of Brunei – how did he do it – but how could I forget his wife is a money-minting machine!

Did you see the selfsame man with Atiku? Did you notice the difference? Did you notice the robustness, the comicalness? Did you watch the chumminess and the camaraderie? What meaning did you read into it? You actually have to be an initiate to correctly read everything perfectly.

Just wait for a few days to hear the announcement. I won’t be the one to tell you that the huffing and puffing, the air-punching and the table-banging is all for one thing – the VP position.

For those who had advocated that Obi stayed back and contested with Atiku, it would have been a fatal gambit. He would have come a distant third in the contest, competing with Mohammed Hayatu-Deen. Not because it will be so by the desires of the members, but the goons, wanted it so and would have made it so.

Even the position of the VP which hitherto had been bandied as his for the asking, would have eluded him. Amaechi was there to pick it up.

You heard Dele Momodu an accomplice in that plot telling you that Amaechi was more experienced than Obi in that interview with Charles Aniagolu on ARISE NEWS Television’s Prime Time.

It was all figured out. If Peter Obi had fallen to the plot he would have been the greatest political mugu of the century. He would have rubbished the rock-strong foundation on which his profile was built and stands today – as businessman and politician.

Indeed the plot appeared skewed towards not only making him wave goodbye to politics forever, but caast a huge slur on his exhilarating credentials that account to his being celebrated as one of the most successful Nigerian business tycoons today.

Only a few seconds and the trap would have snapped. Had he waited a few days more in that ADC environment, it would have been over. He would have been trapped in the odd situation of point of no return.

By now he would have become an object of mockery and an item of sport for his enemies. Tons of them would be having a bellyful of laughter over his ordeal by now – had he wasted a second more.

But having that laugh would mean that the eagle has lost its lustre. Obi isn’t Obi just by name. Now, here is the Obi they wanted to trick into a trap. Still in his early 20s, he drove three cars he bought with his own money before graduating from the university.

First year – a Volkswagen Beetle (today’s Venza) – second year a Peugeot 505 (today’s Prado) – third year – a BMW (Today’s Maybach). Now think of yourself as a student then. Think of your children that are students today. That would bring you closer to the persona in question.

It didn’t end there. Still as an undergraduate, he owned the supermarket on campus. There was more. He built residential houses and became a landlord to students and locals in the university community – one of them, said to be Abubakar Sa’ad, the current Sultan of Sokoto, who was then a military officer.

De hear o! This same Obi, was among the 1,000-ONLY, UK customers the American Express Bank gave their Platinum Cards. You know what that means. In the whole of the UK – including oyibo people of all nationalities doing business.

Before his 33rd birthday, this Obi, had become Chairman of a commercial bank and director of other blue-chip companies. At the same age when his colleagues still clutch files in their armpits in pursuit of jobs, he was already heading a conglomerate of firms dealing with supplies and distribution of goods.

So, add all these up! Imagine the number of intriguing situations he must have dealt with in this long journey. Imagine the boardroom politics. Imaging the various business tricks he must have survived.
In politics, this same Obi practically cut off the head of the political monster prowling Anambra for years.

Before his arrival, the whole of the state was one huge conflagration and cataclysm. Elements sponsored by patrons of evil had razing down structures including the Government House of governor’s residence. Anambra was all chaos – a huge bedlam!

But all these Obi faced and conquered, arresting the tempest, quietening the tide and smoothening the waves – not without battles – there was a deluge of them – but with willpower, wisdom, tenacity, consistency, and above all – courage.

He battled the electoral heist that stole his original mandate, won, then impeachment, triumphed, then abrupt tenure termination, challenged it and returned to power – battled entrenched interests in the labour unions – teachers, doctors, workers – et al – prevailed and handed down a new Anambra sitting on the foundation of sobriety and good behaviour.

Now this was the man they wanted to trick. Obi’s case would have been that of the late John Chukwu, the hero in the tragicomedy, Isubru Ekperi – described as the crab which swam across the mighty ocean, but fell in the woman’s pot of soup.

Had Obi, stayed in ADC to contest against Atiku, his fate would have mimicked Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, whom for fear of being thought weak, destroyed his own destiny by killing Ikemefuna and ended up committing suicide! But providence was on his side;

Thankfully, he did not. And today, NDC provides a new horizon. Nigerians are being provided the opportunity of a new country, that could rise from the ashes of the old order – a clean break from the past – a new hope of awakening the sleeping giant!

The Tiny Voice!

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Columns

Jonathan 2027: Between honour of national duty and shame of self-interest

Published

3 weeks ago

May 28, 2026

Whirlwindnews

By Sunny Igboanugo

On Wednesday, April 22, 2026, Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria’s 14th leader and the fourth elected President was at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on a visit to President Bola Tinubu. Nobody knew the content of that visit because discussions were conducted closed doors.

However, knowing Tinubu, would anything concerning him ever be free of politics, especially given the nuances of the season? Would the snake ever give birth to a creature that is short?

Naturally, as it is wont with Nigeria where one event takes over from the other in quick successions, the Jonathan visit, naturally disappeared – buried inside the reservoir of public consciousness.

But then, things have begun to unfold that people are not only now returning to that April visit, but are taking notes as well as connecting the dots.

Nothing yet seems definite, except in the realm of the popular local saying that when a witch cries at night and the baby dies in the morning, the people know where to look.

Indeed, the droppings of the caterpillar on the ground is making people look up to the tree to see if they are actually eating the green leaves on them. Naturally, events around the 14th President, do not look ordinary – at least not that ordinary to escape more than a scant public scrutiny.

So, when on Thursday May 7, 2026 youths stormed the Abuja office of the ex-President urging him to run for the office he left in 2015, after his historic defeat by Muhammadu Buhari, it elicited a deeper interest from the previous attempts. Yes! It wasn’t the first time Nigerians would be making the pitch. Several groups had tried in the past, even as far back as the 2023 elections.

So, the attempt three weeks ago, was not new. But, this time, eyebrows were raised all the same because it seemed to conduce more intriguing interpretations. Therefore, instead of mere passing interests, Nigerians are now interrogating deeply, putting two and two together.

How much did the former President know about that visit? Did those youths ambush him or was he in the know that such a visit would take place? Was it what is known here as an arrangee – a well-crafted political facade?

Then came the angle of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). A long time ago, when speculations were rife that Peter Obi, was being courted by the former ruling party to return and run for the 2027 presidential election on its platform, Jerry Gana, a stalwart of the party had served notice that they even had a more seducing and deliverable option. It turned out to be Jonathan.

So, long before the Nyesom Wike devastating blow on the party that has kept it in its prostrate state, Jonathan had been on the cards as the number one option for the party. Therefore, it follows that the current steps the party is taking to draft him in, to run as its candidate in the election, is normal. But is it?

The argument in PDP quarters for the Jonathan choice is because he is the only one constitutionally barred from contesting a second term, he is the most fitted to satisfy all shades of political interests in Nigeria today, especially the North eager to return to power. Quite scintillating.

But seducing as this appears, there is a hugely compelling argument against the move. A groundswell of analysts swear that the ex-President is being pushed into the ring as an instrument to stop Peter Obi, the current moving train threatening to crush the ambition of Tinubu to remain in office beyond 2027. In other words, the sole reason is to play the spoiler role.

Supposing this is the reason. Then what is before us is more fatal than critical. This is the same Jonathan whose singular act of calling Buhari that morning on March 31, 2015 to concede defeat, suddenly catapulted him to a global democratic icon – the same that hops into presidential planes to other countries in Africa to straighten crooked democratic roads.

Now, would the same Jonathan swear with his church mind that Tinubu’s model of democracy is what he would prescribe even for an enemy country, let alone Nigeria? What aspect of the country has Tinubu not damaged. So, what would make him a Tinubu’s ally in the further destruction of Nigeria, if he truly loves the country?

This was the same Jonathan who swore that his ambition was not worth the blood of any Nigerian. Is he not aware that the land on which he’s standing is already soaked with the blood of the same citizens by the sheer butchery that is happening daily in the country under the nose of the most underwhelming President yet? Isn’t this the issue now?

Indeed, not a few people have argued that Jonathan should be in the forefront of the Obi project. For one, Obi was once his appointee apart from being a sworn ally. So, he would be in a position to ascertain his true qualities first hand and confirm that he’s the only one among the lot that could fix the country. Even an imbecile knows that Obi would create the clean break from the past that Nigeria needs today to build the future everyone desires.

Besides, he Jonathan, if anything is substantially part of the reason the South East is in its current state at the moment, the level of support the area gave him throughout his tenure is part of the reason the late Buhari increased his hatred for the Igbo a million times more – a phenomenon he transferred through the APC to Tinubu – and which the current President has been unable to extricate himself from.

Okay, is the former President not aware that the position Tinubu is sitting on today belongs to the South East – the zone that took him like one of them that they even gave him an Igbo name – Ebele. If everyone else shortchanges Ndigbo, would he also join, given the foregoing? What manner of ingratitude would that be?

O yes! He has had his Villa meeting. PDP has adopted him as their candidate. Even the legal barrier that would have stopped him, was cleared on Monday when Justice Peter Lifu of the Federal High Court, Abuja, handed him the all-clear sign. He has told the world that he is consulting. While at it, hopefully, more people would tell him the home truth.

Fortunately, he was the one who said it is easy to wake someone that is actually asleep than someone pretending to be asleep. Regrettably, by his silence since the obscene drama began, it appears he prefers the latter. Therefore, his action would not derive from ignorance.

If he finally bites at the apple, it wouldn’t be because he didn’t know how much Tinubu has messed up Nigeria and the implication of reinforcing him with another four years.

His complicity wouldn’t mean that he doesn’t know what to do to reverse the trend. It would only mean that personal interest has taken the better part of him and not the love of the country.

If he deliberately makes that choice, with both eyes open, then he’s welcome in the hall of infamy rather than honour. Fortunately, there is still a window to prove that the foregoing was a mere political nightmare and not reality. But otherwise, it would be apposite for Nigerians to say in unison – GOODLUCK?

My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!

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