Author name: Umar Idris Shuaibu

By Onyedikachi Chinatu “The only thing I disagree with is naming IPOB terrorist; they are not terrorists.” “I stay in Onitsha, and I can tell you that they are people I pass them on the road every day.” No doubt emotions has eroded the minds of some Nigerians making them vulnerable to politicians who feeds on these emotions but more importantly is that our reasoning should not let this be, it is for this purpose that I have tried in providing evidences to these issues and as Peter Obi himself will always chant “go and verify” I have tried to make these verifications easier. The words above were the very words of Peter Obi, during a 2022 interview while reacting to the designation of IPOB as a terrorist organization. (https://www.vanguardngr.com/2022/10/ipob-members-not-terrorists-i-live-with-them-peter-obi/amp/) Years later, these comments continue to raise questions, not because Nigerians are opposed to free speech or alternative opinions, but because insecurity has left deep wounds across the country and especially within parts of the South-East where many families, businesses, and communities have directly or indirectly suffered from violence, fear, and economic disruptions. Read Also: Unlike Many, Ganduje Left No Major Project Behind ‘IPOB members are not terrorists’ — Peter Obi’s past remarks trend online NDC chairman attacked, Obi-Kwankwaso posters set ablaze in Kano Across several South-East states, sit-at-home orders and their enforcement have disrupted commercial activities, education, transportation, and everyday life. Major commercial cities once known for nonstop economic activities have repeatedly witnessed closures, empty streets, and declining investor confidence. (https://businessday.ng/news/article/nigerias-south-east-region-losses-n7-6trn-on-ipobs-sit-at-home-order/ ) The insecurity situation also produced tragic incidents that shaped national conversations. On April 5, 2021, gunmen attacked the correctional facility and police formations in Owerri, Imo State, leading to mass prison breaks and widespread security concerns. Nigerian authorities linked the incident to IPOB and its armed wing, though the group denied involvement. (https://www.channelstv.com/2021/04/05/imo-prison-attack-1844-inmates-escaped-corrections-authorities/) Beyond isolated attacks, reports have documented hundreds of deaths, repeated disruptions, and severe economic losses connected to insecurity and the enforcement of sit-at-home actions across the region. (https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/separatists-sit-at-home-protests-lead-700-deaths-nigerias-southeast-report-says-2025-05-26/) This is why public figures seeking national leadership are often judged not only by what they criticize, but also by what they defend, how they frame sensitive issues, and the clarity of the alternatives they provide. Peter Obi has consistently criticized the current administration over insecurity and the economy. Criticism itself is not a problem. In democracy, governments should be questioned and challenged. In fact, opposition politics exists partly for that reason. However, difficult questions also deserve difficult answers. When insecurity in parts of the South-East escalated, did his public comments provide enough reassurance to victims and families affected by violence? When discussing groups and movements that government institutions view differently, could such statements have been interpreted differently by people living with fear and uncertainty? And perhaps more importantly, beyond repeatedly pointing out failures, what specific pathways has he consistently placed before Nigerians as solutions? Supporters often describe Peter Obi as disciplined, prudent, and accountable. Critics argue that he sometimes appears quicker at identifying problems than communicating practical implementation strategies. Both viewpoints deserve consideration. Politics should not simply be about who criticizes more effectively. It should also be about who provides clearer answers. Because in a country battling insecurity, unemployment, economic hardship, and growing divisions, Nigerians have a right to question those in government. They equally have a right to question those asking to replace them. Onyedikachi  Chinatu writes from Kano onyedikachichinatu7@gmail.com

In Nigerian politics, the most dangerous statements a presidential candidate can make are not the ones that generate immediate controversy, attract swift condemnation, and are quickly walked back through press releases and media appearances. Those statements are managed, contextualised, and eventually absorbed into the permanent background noise of the political cycle. The most dangerous statements are the ones that are never retracted, never formally revisited, and never replaced by a position that more accurately reflects the gravity of what was originally said. They are the statements that sit quietly in the public record, accumulating relevance with every passing month, waiting for the moment when the political stakes are highest to reveal themselves as the most consequential and most damaging liabilities in a candidate’s entire profile. For Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate of 2023 and now the presidential flagbearer of the Nigeria Democratic Congress for 2027, that statement was made on Channels Television on October 1, 2017, and it has never, in the nine years since it was first uttered, been retracted, corrected, or replaced by anything that could be reasonably interpreted as a changed position. The statement is on record, verified by multiple credible outlets including Vanguard, Legit.ng, Guardian Nigeria, and Channels Television itself. Speaking on the programme Politics Today, Peter Obi said, in his own words: “The only thing I disagree with is naming IPOB terrorist. They are not terrorists. I stay in Onitsha, and I can tell you that they are people I pass on the road every day. I meet and live with them. In fact, I usually see people gathering, and I have never had the sense of threat or molestation from them, even when they gather.” The context of the statement was the Buhari administration’s September 2017 proscription of the Indigenous People of Biafra as a terrorist organisation, a designation that the Federal High Court of Nigeria had formally endorsed, that the United Kingdom government had accepted by May 2022 and used as the basis for excluding IPOB members from its asylum programme, and that successive Nigerian security and intelligence assessments had supported on the basis of documented violent attacks, enforced sit-at-home orders, and killings attributed to the group and its Eastern Security Network affiliate across the South-East of Nigeria. The political significance of the statement did not end in 2017. It resurfaced with devastating effect ahead of the 2023 presidential election, generating widespread outrage across Northern Nigeria and deepening the already substantial trust deficit that Obi faced in a region whose communities had borne disproportionate suffering from organised political violence and whose voters demanded, as the absolute minimum threshold of political credibility, that any candidate seeking their support be willing to call those who threatened their lives and communities by the legally designated names that the Nigerian state had given them. The contrast that northern commentators, political analysts, and ordinary voters repeatedly drew was stark and inescapable: northern political leaders had consistently and without hesitation called Boko Haram and bandits terrorists, accepting the moral and political responsibility of that designation regardless of its domestic political cost. Peter Obi had not extended the same moral clarity to IPOB, and the question of why he had not was one that his campaign never satisfactorily answered. Read Also: ‘IPOB members are not terrorists’ — Peter Obi’s past remarks trend online Ganduje, Kuku and the transformation of Nigeria’s airports NDC chairman attacked, Obi-Kwankwaso posters set ablaze in Kano When the pressure to address his IPOB position finally became politically unsustainable in July 2023, Obi issued a statement on insecurity in Nigeria that his critics rightly identified as a masterclass in strategic evasion. The statement emphasised killings in the North Central zone while describing the criminal activities of IPOB in the South-East as merely a disruption of business and social activities, a characterisation that the families of security personnel killed by the group, the communities subjected to economic strangulation through enforced sit-at-home orders, and the ordinary South-Eastern residents who had been living under a climate of fear and intimidation for years would have found not merely inadequate but deeply insulting. The statement referred to sit-at-home orders as purported reports, a qualifier that effectively called into question the documented experiences of millions of people, and it conspicuously declined to call for the investigation of IPOB or the arrest of those responsible for the violence attributed to the group. It was not a retraction of his 2017 position. It was a careful and deliberately constructed restatement of it in language that was marginally more diplomatic but substantively identical. The political context of 2027 makes this unresolved liability significantly more dangerous for Obi’s northern ambitions than it was in 2023. In the intervening years, the humanitarian and security consequences of IPOB’s activities in the South-East have accumulated to a point where the group’s designation as a terrorist organisation is no longer merely a legal technicality or a political contestation but a lived reality for millions of Nigerians across multiple regions. The sit-at-home orders, backed by violence and intimidation, have cost the South-Eastern economy hundreds of billions of naira and disrupted the education, healthcare, and daily economic activity of communities that IPOB claims to represent but demonstrably harms. The Eastern Security Network’s documented attacks on security forces and civilian infrastructure have produced a body count and a pattern of organised violence that any serious presidential candidate is obligated to address with the moral clarity and the institutional seriousness that the scale of the harm demands. Peter Obi has not provided that clarity. His campaign for 2027 has focused on economic management, governance reform, power sector development, and the strategic deployment of Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso as his running mate in a bid to address the northloaded credibility deficit that his 2023 campaign exposed with devastating electoral clarity. Those are legitimate and important dimensions of a presidential campaign. But they do not substitute for the fundamental question that northern voters, whose communities have consistently been on the receiving end of organised

By Mohammed Babagana Abubakar State Coordinator, The Unifier Project, Kano State In the theater of modern statecraft, the supreme duty of a nation’s leader is the preservation of sovereignty, the protection of citizens, and the unwavering defense of constitutional order. For a complex, multi ethnic federation like Nigeria, this responsibility depends entirely on institutional consistency and the rule of law. Governance cannot be driven by personal sentiment, localized familiarity, or individual proximity to security challenges. Rather, it must be anchored in established legal frameworks that apply equally to all citizens and groups, regardless of geography or political considerations. When political actors allow personal relationships or subjective experiences to override formal state institutions, the foundational trust holding the federation together begins to weaken. Such a development not only undermines public confidence in government but also creates uncertainty regarding the state’s commitment to justice and national security. A stark representation of this governance dilemma is captured in the historical discourse surrounding national security, exemplified by the Premium Times archival report featured in 1000408115.jpg. In the report, former Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi was quoted as saying: “IPOB members not terrorists, I live with them… They are people I pass on the road every time, and every day.” While such a statement may have been intended to communicate familiarity with the people of the region or to advocate a less confrontational approach, it nevertheless raises fundamental questions about leadership and security policy. More importantly, it invites Nigerians to reflect on a critical issue, should personal experience determine how a potential Commander in Chief interprets organizations that have already been subjected to legal and judicial scrutiny? Read Also: ‘IPOB members are not terrorists’ — Peter Obi’s past remarks trend online Ganduje breaks silence on Kwankwaso remarks, recalls 1998 Kano primaries NDC chairman attacked, Obi-Kwankwaso posters set ablaze in Kano The office of the Commander in Chief is an institution, not a personal platform. Consequently, threats to national security must be evaluated through the objective lens of constitutional provisions, judicial pronouncements, and intelligence assessments not through personal observations or individual relationships. The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) was formally proscribed as a terrorist organization by a Federal High Court under the Terrorism (Prevention) Act. Whether one agrees or disagrees with that designation, it remains a legal reality within Nigeria’s constitutional framework. Such decisions emerge from legal processes and security evaluations designed to protect national stability and preserve public order. When influential political figures appear to diminish the significance of these institutional determinations by emphasizing personal familiarity with members of a proscribed organization, a dangerous precedent is created. It suggests that legal classifications can be subjected to individual interpretation based on personal encounters. Such a philosophy risks weakening the authority of state institutions and encouraging selective compliance with the law. If a national leader can reinterpret a proscription based on personal proximity, what prevents future leaders from applying similar reasoning to bandits, insurgent groups, or violent militias operating within their own regions? Statecraft demands consistency. Once an organization has been formally designated a threat through legal channels, government officials must engage that reality through lawful and institutional mechanisms rather than subjective perceptions. To build an indivisible Nigeria a central mission championed by The Unifier Project leaders must inspire confidence across all regions, ethnicities, and religious communities. Citizens from Kano to Calabar, Sokoto to Lagos, and Maiduguri to Port Harcourt expect equal protection under the law and a uniform standard of security governance. When a prominent political figure uses language that appears to humanize or excuse a proscribed organization on the basis of regional familiarity, it can generate a national trust deficit. Citizens affected by insecurity in other parts of the country may begin to question whether the law is being applied equally. Victims of terrorism, banditry, insurgency, and violent extremism deserve assurance that national security policies are guided by principles rather than regional sentiments. True national unity cannot thrive where selective empathy replaces consistent application of the law. A security threat in one part of Nigeria must be regarded as a concern for the entire federation. Ambiguity from national leaders only risks deepening divisions and undermining collective confidence in the state. The ultimate measure of an effective Commander in Chief is the ability to separate personal familiarity from executive responsibility. Ordinary citizens may encounter people or situations daily without fully appreciating their broader implications for national security. A national leader, however, cannot afford such limitations. The Nigerian electorate deserves leaders who provide clarity, consistency, and unwavering commitment to institutional governance. Trust is strengthened when citizens are confident that those entrusted with power will uphold judicial decisions, respect established legal frameworks, and enforce the rule of law without fear, favoritism, or regional bias. In the face of challenges to Nigeria’s sovereignty and unity, institutional prescription must always take precedence over personal perception. That is the essence of responsible leadership and the foundation upon which lasting national stability is built.