THE TRAITORS AMONG IGBO POLITICAL LEADERS VERSUS PETER OBI’S MATCHLESS POPULARITY

 

THE TRAITORS AMONG IGBO POLITICAL LEADERS VERSUS PETER OBI’S MATCHLESS POPULARITY

By Rev. Fr. John Odey

Part 6

October 16, 2026

This article had previously been published in five parts in different social media platforms. The first part was published on April 24, 2026 while the fifth part was published on May 16, 2026. When I wrote the fifth part, I did not know that I would be compelled to write more on the same issue. But recently, the way the attack of some traitorous Igbo political leaders has graduated from verbal to physical attack called for the need to continue the article.

Peter Obi and his supporters have been attacked in Edo and Benue States. But those attacks are not the subjects of this article. Rather, I am saddened that it is his fellow Igbo political leaders that are mischievously blackmailing and frustrating Obi in his bid to become the president of Nigeria. Behold:

On Saturday, October 10, at the Akanu Ibiam International Airport, Enugu, while the supporters of Nigerian Democratic Congress (NDC) gathered to welcome Sir Christian Chinyeaka Ohaa, for the campaign flag-off of NDC governorship candidate for Enugu State, suspected political thugs attacked them with planks, tear gas and sporadic gunshots. On the same day, the NDC State Secretariat, GRA Enugu, was attacked by armed men suspected to be APC political thugs. One person was reported dead while five cars that were parked at the Secretariat were damaged.

On September 12, 2026, some gunmen believed to be sponsored by the ruling All Progressives Congress attacked people who were having NDC ward meeting at Ndiuno-Obuofia Community in Nkanu West Local Government Area of Enugu State. No life was reported lost but some people were reported injured.

Enugu State Government has perfunctorily denied any involvement in the attack. But the truth of what happened can be seen in the Igbo proverb which says that the little bird dancing on the public road has someone somewhere in a nearby bush playing the music for it. The people who attacked Peter Obi’s supporters in the broad daylight could not have been bold enough to do so unless they were backed by some very powerful connections. 

The attack on Obi and his supporters by some Igbo political leaders is a sheer manifestation of the political madness I talked about in my book, This Madness Called Election 2003. I crave your indulgence to draw our attention to what happened after the publication of that book.

And the reason I have for occasionally recounting my encounter with some security agents is simply to let us, particularly my fellow Catholic priests, brace up for any eventuality in the course of our battle against the criminality that goes on in our country in the name of leadership.

At the end of the 2003 political election, I published the book, This Madness Called Election 2003. The book came out of print exactly 14 days after the election. That was long before President Olusegun Obasanjo who was the primary beneficiary of that electoral robbery and his supporters settled down to enjoy their robbery.

The disturbing title of that book, its factual exposition of the terrible things that happened in the name of election and the haste with which it flooded the streets and some bookshops made me a target of the members of the State Security Service (SSS). It began with all manner of rumours flying in the air that plans had been completed for my arrest after the presidential inauguration of May 29, 2003.

To demonstrate how weighty the rumours were, while they gathered momentum in Ebonyi State, the State Government, under the leadership of Governor Sam Ominyi Egwu, put up a special announcement in Ebonyi Television, Ebonyi Radio and the Radio Nigeria Enugu, dissociating herself from the plan to arrest me.

On Monday, July 11, 2003, three strange men came to St. Patrick’s Parish, in Abakaliki town, where I was then the parish priest, looking for one Fr. John Odey. When I told them that I am the Fr. John Odey, they wanted to know if I am the person who wrote the book called This Madness Called Election 2003. I answered them in the affirmative. They then introduced themselves as members of the SSS who were sent to take me to Abuja on account of that book.

I told them that I was ready and willing to go with them. More importantly, I told them that I would like them to do me one favour once we got to Abuja. They should allow me to meet President Obasanjo face to face and speak to him just for five minutes about the election. After that, they could shoot me to death. When I said that you could see how visibly shaken the very people who came to arrest me for writing a book were. At that point, they asked me to give them a copy of the book, which I did. They disappeared with the book. 

The following day, Tuesday, July 12, 2003, they came back to the parish. Instead of taking me to Abuja they told me that we were in a democracy. That they had read the book and seen that I did not say anything in it that would warrant my being taken to Abuja. I pleaded with them to take me to Abuja. But they refused.

That same day, July 12, 2003, after they had finished with me, I was later told by the vendors who sold the book on the streets of Abakaliki town that they collected the copies of the book from them. From there they went to Enugu, invaded the SNAAP Press, the publisher of the book, collected all the copies of the book that I was yet to take home, carted away all of its films and plates from the lithographic room to forestall the printing of more copies and invited the Director for a chat. The chat lasted for two days. By the time it was over, it had cost an innocent man a great deal in a democratic Nigeria.

After that encounter thousands of copies of the book were printed. And as providence would have it, instead of arresting and taking me to Abuja, the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) an umbrella organisation for all political parties in Nigeria, wrote a letter to me asking for permission to launch the book on July 29, 2003, at the Women Centre, Garki, Abuja, in order to “draw local and international attention to the massive irregularities, fraud, and atrocities that characterized the charade called 2003 general elections.”

Having granted the permission, the Conference collected 1000 copies of the book and paid me the market price of N300.00 each. That was all I needed. I did not go to Abuja for the launching. I did not need the money realized from the launching.

The battle to save the soul of Nigeria from the misdeeds of our predatory political leaders has since intensified. But I must say that the launching of that book in Abuja, the seat of the very government that wanted me arrested for writing it, the wide publicity and popular acclaim the book received before and after the launching, all combined to convince me that there is an urgent need for us to stand up for the truth in this country.

As scared as our people might be, they are nevertheless yearning for truth. Those who have the courage to speak out for the people cannot afford to disappoint them, knowing that only the truth shall set our nation free. Our freedom does not lie with keeping silent when political leaders form robbery syndicates to destroy Nigeria. The launching of the book meant for me the triumph of the truth that government agents wanted to perish. In that book, I wrote:

“Leadership in Nigeria has become a huge investment and a life insurance scheme where one has to engage in many abnormal things to be secure in perpetuity. And no Nigerian who has tasted the trappings of office has ever left them without fierce and often violent pressure while those who aspire to be there spare nobody and nothing on their way.”

Twenty-three years later, this is why the political traitors in Igboland want to destroy Peter Obi. In the book, I also wrote:

“It is possible to rule a people by force. But it is impossible to have peace while you keep others in chains. It is possible to unjustly force an unwilling people to submission. But you can do that only at a greater cost to your person, your integrity and your honour.”

Twenty-three years later, David Umahi (Minister of Works), Charles Soludo (Governor of Anambra State), Peter Mba (Governor of Enugu State) and some other political traitors in Igboland are telling the Igbo in Igboland that they should not cast their votes for Peter Obi because it is not yet the turn of the Igbo to rule Nigeria. That is sheer madness. We shall say more about that later.

Only God knows how much money they got from Tinubu to enable them auction the wellbeing of the Igbo to him. But what is definite is that as long as history lasts, they have played havoc with their personality, integrity, reputation and honour. Finally, in that book, I wrote:

“For this country to live in peace, the so-called April 2003 elections must be cancelled from beginning till the end and a fresh date be fixed for the elections. Unless this is done, I cannot foresee any prospects for peace in the country. If Obasanjo and his disciples are allowed to be sworn in as our leaders on the basis of the so-called April 12 and 19, 2003 elections, our children and children’s children will live to curse the day we allowed injustice on the largest scale to prevail in this land.”

How I wished I have been proved wrong! Twenty-three years later, election-rigging has become an unwritten political dogma in Nigeria. To secure any meaningful political position in Nigeria, one must abide by that dogma. You must be an unconscionable election rigger, not a political saint like Peter Obi who has vowed that if he becomes the president anybody who rigs election must go to jail.

Since I said nothing in This Madness Called Election 2003 to warrant the harassment from the SSS, I simply made a scathing mockery of their attempt to intimidate me. Rather than being intimidated, I wrote another book, After The Madness Called Election 2003. In that book, I said the following as a part of the great damage that election rigging has done to our nation: 

“What has endangered the survival of this and other democracies in Nigeria is the wrongful belief that people who are elected by no one can be enthroned without qualms once they have been able to conquer and silence us through the illegal deployment of the army and the police to compel us to submission.

“They have turned political elections into a full-blown war against the people who do not agree with them. And in this war, all you need in order to conquer are instruments of terror. You need guns, the army and the police. If the number of the army and the policemen you need is inadequate, you can create your own army and the police simply by placing order for more military and police uniforms.

“When those uniforms arrive, you put them on a good number of political hoodlums, give them very dangerous guns, and let them loose on the people in the name of peacekeepers. They will do the clean job of putting terrorism in the place of the people’s power. And then, at the end, you will emerge a landslide winner.”

Since 2003, Nigerians have been living in the tragedy of electoral robbery. But for me, in view of the predicaments of the Igbo in Nigeria, the tragedy of all tragedies is what Umahi, Soludo, Mba and other Igbo politicians are currently doing to Mr. Peter Obi. As vicious and venomous as the attack currently is, let us presume that its surge is still ankle-deep. It must not be allowed to become neck-deep. If it does, the effect may likely be more devastating on the Igbo than the effect of the Nigeria-Biafra war.

“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.” (Matthew 12:25). In spite of the fact that millions of the Igbo were killed during the Nigeria-Biafra war, in spite of the inestimable damage done to Igboland, Igbo property and Igbo psyche during that war, the Igbo survived because they stayed together during the three years of the genocidal war.

Today, Bola Ahmed Tinubu has succeeded in dividing and destroying the Igbo. Shame on the traitors among Igbo political leaders. Nigeria is not a personal estate of Tinubu. The South-East is not a personal estate of the Igbo political traitors. The traitors have no right to insist that the Igbo must vote for Tinubu and not for Peter Obi. No condition is permanent. Unless they retract their perilous anti-Igbo shenanigans, nemesis is monitoring them.

*To Be Continued*