By Ikechukwu Amaechi
A common African adage says that “if a witch cries in the night and a child dies in the morning, we do not go to the soothsayer to ask what killed the child.” Edo State Governor, Monday Okpebholo, is very much aware of this truism.
In July 2025, he declared, quite unreasonably, that the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 elections, Mr. Peter Obi, must obtain security clearance from him before visiting Edo State again, otherwise, his security cannot be guaranteed.
Obi’s crime was that earlier that month, he visited St. Philomena Hospital School of Nursing Sciences in Benin, where he made a donation of N15 million. Rattled by the warm reception accorded him by the staff and students of the school, Okpebholo went berserk.
Claiming, without any shred of evidence, that Obi’s visit triggered violence and the death of three persons, Okpebhelo, in a smattering of English, declared haughtily: “There is a new sheriff in town. He cannot just come into Edo without informing me. His security will not be guaranteed. If anything happens to him here, he will have himself to blame. I am not joking.”
That was a direct threat to Obi’s life and a dangerous precedent for democracy, which ought to have elicited a sharp rebuke from the Nigerian state. None came. I don’t know, though, if any discerning Nigerian expected any. But even when intense backlash forced Okpebholo to say that his harebrained threat should not be misconstrued as a threat, the Edo State chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Jarret Tenebe, doubled down and escalated the threat at a press conference in Benin.
“The governor can say that because of the kind of hatred people have for Peter Obi in the state, including me, and when you have so many of us that have hatred for people like that… it is proper for him to tell the governor before he comes so that people like us can be sent on errand out of Edo before he can come and possibly go.”
During a live interview on TVC, he was unapologetic. “The opposite of hate is love. If I don’t love you, I hate you. I know I expressed myself, so I do not hide my feelings. I do not like Peter Obi. I still maintain it, and if I do not like somebody, I hate the person… I am an extremist. I do not like Peter Obi; I hate him. I have the right to like or hate.”
Obi, deeply hated by Edo people? Incredible! This is a state that is unarguably the melting pot of Obedients in Nigeria, a state where he floored Tinubu in the 2023 presidential election, polling a total of 331,163 as against Tinubu’s 144,471 votes. Many Nigerians were nonplussed because that was a new low. Yet, the government did nothing against these merchants of hate.
And barely seven months thence, there was a fulfilment of Okpebholo’s threat: the chicken coming home to roost, if you like. It is a classic case of the witch crying in the night and a child dying in the morning.
On Tuesday, February 24, Obi was back in Benin City to formally welcome Olumide Akpata, the 2023 Edo State Labour Party governorship candidate, into the African Democratic Congress, ADC. He was not alone. Two former governors of the state – Chief John Odigie Oyegun, former APC national chairman, and Senator Oserheimen Osunbor – were also there.
And then, the gunmen came calling. First, they went to the ADC secretariat in Benin City where they wreaked havoc. But the opposition leaders, apparently their main targets, had left the secretariat before their arrival. Undaunted, and in the manner of a child whose father sends to steal from a house, who breaks down the door with his bare foot, the hoodlums trailed them to Oyegun’s home in the Benin GRA where they rained bullets. Obi and the other ADC leaders escaped death by the whiskers. Of course, knowing who their backers are, the hoodlums became arrogant, losing all sense of precaution – a case of government officials terrorising fellow citizens because of political differences.
With all eyes on him, Okpebholo rushed out a press statement denying culpability. His administration will neither engage in attacks against law-abiding Nigerians, irrespective of political affiliation, nor instruct any arm of the Edo State Government to target members of any political party, he claimed.
But he couldn’t help but take a potshot at his bête noire. “It is now evident that the ADC and by extension Peter Obi is mischievous and making efforts to cast aspersion on the good things that this administration is doing. It only suggests to us that Peter Obi is synonymous with violence and the state government will not condone such acts,” Okpebholo said in the statement issued by his spokesman, Patrick Ebojele.
But can anyone blame Okpebholo? Obi has become a fair game for every political nonentity in Nigeria. Last year, he queried the source of Obi’s wealth, wondering where he got N15 million. But if not for Nigeria’s unprincipled brand of politics that has become an all-comers affair, Okpebholo is unworthy of unstrapping Obi’s shoe lace.
On July 24, 2025, in the article, ‘Only in Jagaban’s Nigeria’, I wrote: “It is insulting for an Okpebholo to ask Obi, a successful businessman and one of the few Nigerian politicians who financed his election without the help of any godfather, where he got N15 million from. One wonders what he was doing when Obi became chairman of Fidelity Bank at the young age of 37.”
Attack on opposition leaders is an ill wind that blows no one, not even the masterminds, any good. This is not about Peter Obi. It is about the penchant of the Tinubu-led APC to asphyxiate all opposition political parties. It is typical of the president’s toxic politics that does not take prisoners.
It is ironic that a party that boasts of 31 state governors, absolute majority in the two chambers of the National Assembly, 40 million registered members, a president that is in firm control of all the levers of power and absolute loyalty of all officers and men of the armed forces of the Federal Republic, the judiciary and the so-called Independent National Electoral Commission, will not allow the weakened opposition parties to breathe. ADC meetings were disrupted in Kaduna and Lagos states. And now, Edo State. And there is every reason to believe that state agents are behind these atrocious acts.
I find it very distasteful that some people are even blaming Obi for going to Edo State. Under Tinubu’s watch, violence has become an acceptable political language. It will be worse as the silly season of politics goes into full swing. During the Abuja Municipal Area Council, AMAC, chairmanship election on February 21, ADC agent Musa Abubakar was killed at the Gwagwa polling unit. His crime? Attempting to safeguard votes at his polling station. No arrests were made. Nigerians have moved on.
The violence will be worse in 2027. The augury is too stark to be ignored. Emboldened by the body language of President Tinubu, many state governors will stop some opposition politicians and their political parties from using public facilities in their states for campaign purposes. Some will decree against such campaigns outright. The Federal Capital Territory Minister, Nyesom Wike, did it in 2023 when he was Rivers State governor, and to borrow his favourite phrase, the heavens did not fall. In 2027, many copycats will pirate the political brigandage which he patented in 2023.
Democracy cannot be a diktat. What is happening is frightening and dangerous. If I were President Tinubu, I will rein in the dogs of war and ensure that nothing happens to Peter Obi and, indeed, any of the opposition leaders. It may well be true that if Obi is killed, the heavens will not fall. But Nigeria may not recover from such heinous crime.
