Columns
Alex Otti: How to avoid the acid rain in Abia!
Anybody that was at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs a fortnight ago would have noticed my frantic efforts to speak at that event during the question-and-answer session. It got to the point of desperation. In fact, the only thing I didn’t do was to snatch the microphone from Okey Bakassi, the compere at that event.
What was my reason? Outside other issues occupying my mind, I wanted to pass a direct message to Alex Otti, who was the keynote lecturer at Niche Lecture that brought all of us to that forum. Regardless that the event was packaged by Ikechukwu Amaechi – my boss and bosom friend – If I had the opportunity to speak, I would have practically scattered the table probably – that was depending how the audience and the governor himself received the message.
I wanted desperately to tell the governor that he was on a wrong road – politically. Yes! There is no doubt that Otti is the most popular governor in Nigeria today. Mind my words – not the South East but Nigeria as a whole – a status that he earned by his demonstrable evidence of performance.
Now, when people refer to Chukwuma Charles Soludo, my own governor in Anambra as olu-atuegwu – roughly translated – Mr. Big Projects – I shudder, chuckle and laugh it away as mere platitudinal praise-singing found in and around government corridors. We all know who owns that sobriquet. We know that Agu Awka doesn’t even come close. But that is by the way.
Otti, far outstrips his counterparts in every way – so much so that there is hardly anywhere anyone could fault him. I’m just as enthused as anyone else about the glorious record. But for one thing – his politics! Call it naivety – call it gullibility – call it fear. But he is totally on a wrong, crooked and slippery road that foretells and screams one thing – DANGER!
Just like his counterparts in other states, Otti believes that President Bola Tinubu holds the key to his second term. He believes that without the President, the APC machinery – which is as merciless as those kidnappers we see assault our sensibilities and very essence of our humanity these days – would eat him raw!
So, what does he do? He runs to the Villa, crawls on his bare bellies, dobale’s before the Jagaban and holds the helms of his sokoto in reverence – call it petrification – you might not be wrong. But Otti knows that this is completely antithetical to the feelings of Ndi-Abia. He is aware! He will be Bata – the retard in my village not to know. That surely, he is not!
In fact, the governor knows that in the whole of Abia State, Tinubu would not secure 10.000 organic votes – 10,000 because of my generosity – I should have said 1,000 daily – because it is difficult to find anyone form Ariaria Market – Ngwa or Abiriba that would dress up in the morning, go to the polls and thumbprint for Tinubu. What would be that person’s reason. And this goes for every other state in the South East. Ndigbo don’t eat what they don’t eat.
Even the President knows this much. So, what would happen on election day? Otti – to impress – and for purely self-preservation will contrive votes for Tinubu – procure or outrightly steal votes of Abi people. Two ways to do this – either leave blood on the floor or unleash huge resources of the people to do so. In either of the cases, he wouldn’t be smelling roses – ceteris paribus! Nobody supporting Tinubu or APC smells roses in the South East.
Certainly, that might create a backlash that could leave him vulnerable in his own election that would come two weeks after. Now, would Abia people forgive him so soon after as to contain the onslaught the APC people would launch thereafter? Would Tinubu, a tricky political character – with his grab – snatch – run with it model, come to his rescue? Tricky!
Now, at that NIIA event, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the Emir of Kano, had been very clear that Otti rode on the vehicle of the Labour Party momentum to get to power and in 2027 would now rely on his own records. I observed how the governor quickly brushed the suggestion aside claiming that he won on his own account of popularity.
To me, this was a completely false assertion. Had Otti run on a different platform, his case would have been far worse than all the previous results where the machinery of government was used at various times to defeat him. His victory was tied to the tsunami that Peter Obi, the LP presidential candidate created across the country, particularly in the South East – which other governors escaped by the skin of their teeth.
There is no doubt that this momentum would even increase in 2027, especially if Obi manages to find his name on the ballot. Otti, working against Obi, would certainly be fatal to his own ambition, regardless his own record. All the positive record he now parades could evaporate by that singular act – with the greater danger being that he might find less sympathy if the hounds in APC hits him hard – using the Tinubu model.
So, what to do? The best bet is for Otti to dare the devil! Stand with Abia people! Soludo was able to escape his own web of anger of the people because the forces of APC disappeared with the death of the late Ifeanyi Uba. Were Uba alive last year, the situation in Anambra might have been different today.
Now, do I have reasons to solidify my position that the total approval of Ndi-Abi is far more potent than the power of Tinubu in 2027? Definitely! Here are two instances. Fortunately, one of them is in Otti’s face. Orji Uzor Kanu once occupied Otti’s position. During the pendency of his governorship, there was no Igbo politician that lacerated former President Olusegun Obasanjo than OUK.
He was practically the ant that entered the former President’s sokoto. Recall that things even go to a head that after Obj, instituted a commission of inquiry, which indicted the then governor, OUK instantly riposted with his own commission to indict the President. Such was the audaciousness. Recall the event when men of the EFCC tried to arrest the governor’s mother and how force jammed force at the Abia Government House forcing the latter to retreat and cause mission to be abandoned.
Yet, Kalu not only served for eight years, but became the only governor in the South East, if not the entire country that formed his own party the – Progressives Peoples Alliance – PPA – with which he won two states. Recall that even one of the governors won his election from the prisons. That was the extent of the battle.
But there is even a more instructive example – Tinubu! For eight years, he fought the same Obj and for the eight years, he survived. In the two cases, what was the magic? Simple – the people! Was it not funny enough that in Tinubu’s case, the entire South West governors, who were naïve enough to team up with Obasanjo, in the PDP, lost deposit, while only Tinubu, who decided to put up a spirited battle survived the onslaught.
Now, is this scenario not enough to forewarn Otti that not all that glitters is gold? Certainly, I won’t shed a tear if Otti reducing himself to a lily-livered, pusillanimous, spineless, pale, trembling coward, begins to weep after February 6, after selling Abia people on January 16.
Naturally, I’ll grieve for Ndi-Abia, just like I’m grieving today that the Mahmoud Yakubu’s technical glitches denied Nigeria of a Peter Obi Presidency that would have put Nigeria on a world map of prosperous country rather than Tinubu’s present poverty capital of the world.
But that wouldn’t stop me from scoffing and sniggering at his naivety. Let him continue toying with his fate – believing he’s smart! O gafu eme ya voom n’anya!
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!
By Sunny Igboanugo
“If you woke me up today and put the question – who is the most patriotic businessman in Nigeria in recent history – the answer will pop-up out instantly – Mike Adenuga! I won’t even have enough time to wipe my drowsy eyes or clear my head out of the sleepiness. It is an answer that has lived in my sub-conscious for years.”
These were my exact words last year. I wrote those words out of a thankful heart to celebrate the multibillionaire, whom, I have just learnt, also goes by the sobriquet – The Chairman or The Great Guru – thanks to Uche Nworah – Ezeudo Ozonmkpu of Enugwu-Ukwu na Umu-Nri – a guru himself in many respects – who has just delivered a heartwarming dissertation on the telecommunications magnate from an insider’s perspective.
I also wrote those words out of great pains and immense regrets that The Great Guru doesn’t own a refinery – just yet – because if he did, Nigerians would not be subjected to the hellish, harrowing and nightmarish experience they are forced to undergo today by the present-day shylocks playing in that field. I won’t name names. Take your tongue and count your teeth.
Just as I commented on Uche’s emotion-laden essay on his ex-boss, if Mike Adenuga owned a refinery today, Nigerians might not be buying petrol above N300 per litre. Reason is he would have found some magic to get around all the arguments offered by the shylocks that have made them continue to see shege banza as the cost of the product, which has remained central to their very existence continue to soar.
You might dismiss this as foolhardiness or ignorance. But I have my reasons. As I wrote last year – Mike Adenuga, has done what I have never seen any other Nigerian do in my long years on earth – sacrifice profit for the benefit of the masses. The introduction by GLO of per second billing in Nigeria, years ago, is the reason you and me are not swimming in the pool of our own tears today.
It was the game-changer that actually put telephony in the hands of the ordinary people – the reason that you could be calling your mother in the village from as far as the UK, US and even China, outside Nigerian cities of Sokoto, Osogbo or Umuahia.
Else, were it not for this move, GSM, would still remain a big luxury like the days of the 090 – naught nine naught – days – telephony will still be a status symbol in Nigeria today – not because of the actual global cost implications – of course neighbouring countries like Togo, Ghana and Benin Republic – far less endowed – had been using it for years – but simply because the shylocks had cornered it.
Remember all the excuses they had offered on why per second billings were impossible in Nigeria. Don’t they sound similar the arguments being made about fuel today. Aren’t they same as the reason for why the cost of owning and maintaining DSTV is higher in Nigeria than any other country the services exist?
Now don’t get it twisted. I was one of the highly privileged here. For one, I wasn’t subjected to some of the hard experiences some people went through. Sampler! Less than a week GSM came into Enugu, I was sitting at 23 Edinburg Street, office of The Guadian, when some gentlemen walked in and handed me a package containing a GSM handset, SIM card package and scores of N1.500 recharge cards.
This was at a time anyone who wanted to key into the new status symbol would go to the courts to swear affidavits, return to the banks to pay a whopping N25,000 – close to N1million in today’s reckoning before being allowed to purchase a GSM SIM card. I didn’t go through the riguours. That was even long before GLO made it to the scene.
So, as a typical Nigerian, I ought to be grateful having a place in the “I better pass my neighbour” list in this regard. But the sheer thievery that followed would not allow that. You know in those days, these shylocks configured their billing to the model that if you generated a call you paid and if you received a call you also paid. This was the level the got. That was until the advent of GLO that changed those thieving models.
I had been wondering why Adenuga chose that game-changer model, which had been declared IMPOSSIBLE before then. Recall that it took the other networks some months to adjust to the per second billing which they must have taken more out of the force of business losses than compassion for the people or change in their original business environment to adjust. For all the variables and excuses they had cited for their shylock behaviour were still in place when they began to copy GLO.
So, I could relate with Uche when he wrote these words: “The Guru is the most kind and greatest benefactor that I know. He gifts, gives, and ‘dashes’ staff, friends, associates and others cash in naira and foreign currency, cars, watches, jewelries, choice drinks and other items. No wonder Dele Momodu uses the phrase ‘the spirit of Africa’ to describe him.
“I am a great beneficiary of his magnanimity as a staff. Not only does he pay above market salaries, he also gives staff money ‘under the table’. The special word for this is in Globacom is ‘stoning’. It is common to hear staff saying; “Mr Chairman ‘stoned’ A & B’. When you are ‘stoned’, you are not expected to tell the other person. It is frowned at in the system to avoid unsettling those who were not ‘stoned.’
Mr Chairman is famous for giving people gifts, even people he doesn’t know, but reaching him to thank him becomes impossible. He does not expect a thank you and also usually doesn’t expect any return favours. He once told us a story during a meeting, of how when he started making money newly, he started buying Rolls Royce cars and other luxury cars.
“He said after sometime he began to realize the vanity in such purchases, so he distributed the whole collection among traditional rulers nationwide. It is a known fact that many people have become multimillionaires just from Mr Chairman’s stoning alone.”
Who else could have chosen that route rather than teaming up with the shylocks to make mega bucks than a man with such a large heart. Without him, Nigerians would probably still be paying as much as N300,000 for SIM cards and cost of calls would still be hitting the rooftops for such mundane, obtuse and criminal reason(s) like – telephony is an international business.
Or haven’t you heard so in DSTV, in petrol and other commodities – as if Nigeria is a different world! So, thank you Uche Nworah. Now we know! I hear it is The Chairman’s birthday, Today, Wednesday, April 29, 2026. May I join the world in saying to the The Great Guru: Hhappy 73rd! We won’t forget.
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!
All over the world the media are always among the first line of victims whenever and wherever democracy dies and dictatorship or autocracy is enthroned. Through the emasculation and asphyxiation of free speech and or freedom of speech, the media become the immediate target in such circumstances.
From the look of things, I don’t think Nigerian journalists are at home with this reality. No! Not just yet! I don’t know why it seems so. But I could hazard some guesses and build up some scenarios which I believe could suffice in assessing the situation.
Perhaps, it is because many of those who lived this reality in the last days of military dictatorship in Nigeria, have since exited the profession, climbed to higher grounds or just receded to the background, as consequences of natural sequence of events where the old is supposed to give way to the new.
Perhaps, it could be the direct result of the evolution in the profession – one of them – the introduction of electronics – if not the substantial or even total reliance on it as news-gathering instrument, which has made the job less cumbersome – thus introducing a pattern of ease in this regard.
Perhaps, it could be the direct consequences of the dearth, diminished impact and even subdued relevance of the print media, which led in the past, now taking a back stage in the new reality of the dominance of the electronic media.
Most probably, the influence of the social media has played a fast one in determining the direction of the industry to the extent that it is now the main source of news even for the traditional outfits, as much as it serves substantially as a distracting, if not distabilising factor.
But whatever it is, either singularly or by a collection of these factors, there is evidence of a demonstrable detour or bypass of the traditional role the media played in Nigeria that helped to shape its history – including dragging it out of the dungeon of military rule into the globally-acceptable arena of what is supposed to be democratic ethos.
Tempered by the new realities of the current generation, the Nigerian media have not only lost the fight in them but had their fangs and claws so smoothened that they now end up as instruments for caressing the patrons and purveyors of bad behaviour the tore at and clawed deeply in the past.
In other words, they have lost the plot. Otherwise, how could the media watch Nigeria suffer this level of degeneration after its chequered history of practically fighting with a million dark spirits and other anti-democratic forces to extricate itself from the vice grip of military rule?
It takes the Nigerian media which has degenerated into an insufferable degradation and complacency to watch the country gravitate towards a one-party state and pretend that they have no role in stopping the drift. Such never happened in the past.
Before 1999, the Nigerian media fought a bloody war against the military, beginning with the brutal era of the late Muhammadu Buhari, who after emerging the Head of State in 1983, launched the most draconian rule that had journalist caught in the crossfire, accentuated by the infamous Decree 2 of 1984, emblematised by the ugly fate of Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor.
Then came the eight years of Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) nicknamed Maradona fashioned after the immense dribbling skills of the Argentine legend, Diego Maradona, which ended with the disastrous June 12, 1993 presidential election saga. Again, the Nigerian media marked the gap-toothed General, man to man and never allowed him breathing space.
Then came the most brutal of them all – the Abacha era, where the war assumed a cataclysmic dimension with Sani Abacha, the merciless military despot that took over from IBB, receiving an equal amount of blitzkrieg as he unleashed on the media even with the clear mismatch of the arsenals on both sides.
It was this media that made Abdulsalami Abubakar, who took over from Abacha to bail with his feet, completing the transition programme that in chaos after 12 years in just one year and handed over to Olusegun Obasanjo, rather than share in the experience of his predecessors.
Even Obasanjo, throughout his eight years, had his feet under fired by a watchful media, culminating in another internecine war that saw the third term agenda, one of the features of that era, crumbling under its own weight and by the force of massive onslaught launched against it.
Today, where are the same media? They have turned out – at best – some beggarly, acquiescing and insipid entities – and at worst – some undiluted, unapologetic and rabid enablers of the same anti-people, anti-democratic forces they fought in the past at the risk of tears and blood. How tragic!
What do you see today? Rather than attacking the bad behaviour that threaten the polity, it is rationalisation. So, in 2023 when a totally staggered nation was reeling in pain as the courts churned out some of the wackiest, basest and most confusing reasons to support the mindless heist against the people’s mandate, it was a that told his bemused audience – public opinion is kilometres away from law.
Today, victim-blaming has become the answer to the clearly dangerous and life-threatening crisis of Nigeria’s drift to a one-party state where President Bola Tinubu could even emerge as a monarch, with limitless powers, if not limitless tenure.
Now, where is the agenda-setting function of the media? It is the function of the media to ferret out malfeasance, maladministration, and bad behaviour, without which governance will degenerate into an irresponsible cabal or a syndicate that perpetrates its actions in darkness. Unfortunately, that is where Nigeria is today. Else, when the media launched the fierce battle against the military, was it for the absence of the mistake on the opposite side. When the media joined the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) in its battle to revalidate the June 12 election and enthronement of full-blown democracy led by Moshood Abiola, was it that the patrons of that war were all blameless.
Yes! In spite of the large baggage Abiola, an acolyte of the military, this ugly record was pushed to the background in the interest of the bigger good – democracy. Going by today’s standard, Nigerian media would have focused on the Abiola’s association with the military and other faultlines as a basis to blame him.
Had that happened, where would Nigeria have been today? But because the media were focused on the larger picture, they in the realization that whatever touches the nose is already close to the mouth, they fought relentlessly. That is how we got here. Could that be said of the situation today.
Joseph Pulitzer once admonished: “There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy. Get these things out in the open, describe them, attack them, ridicule them in the press, and sooner or later public opinion will sweep them away.”
How much has compromise – imbued by pecuniary, ethnic, religious and other primordial sentiments allowed this work? For how long do you blame INEC and the judiciary without blaming the media? There you find the danger – the TRAGEDY.
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m the Tiny Voice!
By Sunny Igboanugo
The kite swooped on the herd of sheep and picked a lamb, soared above the skies onto its nest. The father asked one question – what did the parent say when you took their child. The kite replied – nothing father – they were just gazing at me in silence. Then the kites father made an order – return it immediately. Any parent that keeps mute when its child is in danger, has a more sinister intention hidden in his heart. The kite obeyed and returned the lamb.
The next day, the same kite swooped on a brood of chickens and picked one of them. Then the mother went hysterical flying from pillar to post in frenzied movements. On return, the father again put the same question. This time, the kite presented a different picture, describing the shrieking cries of the mother-hen and how it tried to attack and failure to retrieve its chick, went into a frenzy.
Let’s have dinner, the father quipped excitedly. Danger is over. The parent has displayed every weapon in its arsenal. That is the reason chicks remain the main dish of kites till date. My father told me this story decades ago, which of course is one of the anecdotes that is as old as minds could picture. My father probably picked it from his own father.
Yet, the implication in terms of central message has never lost its texture, despite its longevity. Rather, it has become truer with time – be careful of that man with few words – refrain from attacking a man that has not offended you – never bear false witnesses. These are standard cautionary and globally accepted natural edicts, which when observed in breaches, could result in highly disastrous consequences.
Is it not intriguing how this reality has stung Omoyele Sowore like those wicked agbisi – only those who sat on the bare floors would relate with the brain-twisting, sharp and excruciating pains those black ants delivered through the bare buttocks of children – in our mother’s kitchens in those days?
Have you been watching Vincent Otse, alias Very Dark Man, recently? What do you make of the multiple arrows he has been aiming at the heart of the Revolution Now exponent? I have my people and both the optics and the import derivable therefrom could only taper towards a central reality – cow wey no get tail na God dey drive am fly!
It was a song, sung by the popular Prince Nico Mbaga – that legend of the 1980s, whose epic – Sweet Mother – still resonates centrally in the Nigerian music history even till date, long after he was gone. I think it was the flipside of that legendary outing that dominated the airwaves at the time.
Never had that song, which you heard in those days blasting from the record shops at Achapo Street – in Ajegunle – the popular centre for music records business or through the windows of privileged homes in the face me I face you compounds in the days when even the poor afforded stockfish – now a delicacy you could only enjoy the aroma from a distance if your income is not in six figures – days when even the local women looked at ice fish with disdain and derisively related it with the “poor” as Ozu Nwada. O! What memories! But I digress!
But before I walked too far and disappeared into those days when me, as a child sleeping on a mat at a one-room apartment at Number 14 Uzor Street, but still ate lavish meals which I must now struggle to offer my wards, I return to today’s reality to ask myself why this is happening before my eyes. Why must it be VDM that is now waging a war against Sowore – with whom he was only too cozy – just yesterday!
For months now, this selfsame Sowore, had launched a massive blitzkrieg against Peter Obi, candidate of the Labour Party (LP), in the 2023 presidential election. In what is more of a cocktail of bits and pieces, odds and ends set of drivels rather than any form of articulated reasoning based on facts and figures, this same man, actually came out with what has now become his catchphrase – Obi is a packaged fraud!
Don’t bother to ask him for facts supporting his conclusion. The only one he supplied was that the former Governor of Anambra State, was hobnobbing with supposed thieves and brigands responsible for Nigerian woes.
Yet, this selfsame Sowore, conveniently left out his central role, and incestuous relationship with the same people at an auspicious period, which ended up in watering the ground for what he now complains about from the rooftops. Were it not for Sowore, there might not have been a President Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Tinubu as APC governments – the worst era Nigeria has ever endured and currently cursed with!
Videos even showed him being celebrated nationally for this singular role. Yet, this is the same man, assailing Obi for keeping bad company! But that is what happens with the purveyors of anti-Obi sentiments. They inevitably meet a drought and are left with nothing more to rely on but contrivances. Where the well is dry, they import water tankers to try a rescue.
Where deceit fails, they try illogic, then subterfuge, half-truths, outright lies and then mischief as they meet more frustrations. Imagine a Sowore saying that Obi packed Northerners in lorries and sent them back to their homes. In Nigeria? At what period? The same Obi who built his personal and state security architectures around northern people – Northern Aide De Camp (ADC) and Norther Commissioners of Police throughout his eight years?
To Sowore, nothing is good enough! He even mocks Obi for saying that he owns only one house in Nigeria – a development, which elsewhere defines absolute personal contentment. Elsewhere, the fact that Obi could prove this claim is demonstrable evidence of reduced propensity for induced stealing and absence of hunger for corruption and therefore a call for celebration. But what do you have here? Spite, mockery and contempt.
Now, it is not like Obi’s records – public and private are hidden. This was a man, who even as a university student, had become so successful in business that his chain of buildings were used as bank branches – that at a point was one of the 10 richest men in the UK – in fact, one of the 8.000 richest men in the world – so the source of his wealth is not suspect.
In office as governor, this was the same Obi who took schools in Anambra State from number 26 to number one, starting from his second year in office by sheer dint of visionary leadership anchored on self-denial – the only governor in history that left a whopping N75billion in the coffers – capping it all with emerging as the best in the implementation of the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs).
Now, if a governor attains the first position in this globally-accepted measurement instrument – covering all indices of developmental – physical infrastructure and policy frameworks for human capital development, what else defines excellence in leadership? Yet, people like Sowore will never be persuaded.
Now you know why! VDM has supplied you with the answer. Sowore is in business. His activism is business – his Revolution Now – business – attacks on Tinubu – business – Obi is a packaged fraud – business – presidential ambition business.
Not that the world didn’t know this. But coming from familiar quarters – given the relationship between the two – both erstwhile friends – it is only gotten clearer and better. It is even moreso when the further and better particulars is not coming from Obi, but a more virulent voice!
Now, what is said about fate? What does the law of Karma say again? How does a tailless cow deal with flies again? Sowore has given us the lead and VDM has given you the answer.
But hear the philosopher! Beware of your thoughts, lest they become words; beware of your words, lest they become actions; beware of your actions, lest they become habits; beware of your habits, lest they become character; beware of your character, lest it becomes your destiny! Nigerians, think!
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!
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