Tony Nnadi’s Anti-obidient syndrome and the cacophony of Prof Akintoye’s expulsion
—An Igbo political bat sitting on a floating ethnic calabash
Nwankwo T. Nwaezeigwe, PhD, DD
When I gave the analogy of a little child dancing at the centre of the road with someone beating the drum in the nearby bush for her, I expected that Tony Nnadi who was the drummer will definitely emerge from his cocoon to defend his weird dancer Nneoma—the Ada Ndigbo in Berlin. However, instead of addressing the issues raised, he emerged with a Hitlerian rage cropped in Mormon arrogance to hand down wobbling threats to me.
Referring to those weird women of easy virtue as members of his outreach program in the manner of a Pentecostal Pastor, he went further to degenerate into a pitiable state of self-condemnation in the manner of a fake Pastor seeing his spiritual scam under threat. Indeed Tony Nnadi could be right when he described my life as miserable, but wrong in his assumed ability to destroy my life.
The question is why can’t Tony Nnadi describe my life as miserable when I have devoted all my life defending the Igbo cause at no financial gain, while he gallivants around scamming the same Igbo people of their hard-earned resources in the name of the untenable mission of changing the 1999 Constitution through the political rickety vehicles of Lower Niger Congress and the headless Nigerian Indigenous Nationalities Alliance for Self-Determination (NINAS)?
I want, not wish, to put it to Tony Nnadi that he has not contributed one-tenth of my daring and selfless contributions to the Igbo cause in Nigeria right from my early days as a student activist at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka; except in the matter of swindling unsuspecting ideologically cowered Igbo people. I need not enumerate but just some notable instances. I don’t know how many times if any, Tony Nnadi tested Police and DSS detentions and the real Prisons on account of his political conscience and activism.
For nine years of my first unceremonious exit from University of Nigeria, Nsukka (1999-2008), as President and founder of Igbo People’s Congress (IPC) in Lagos State, I labored to protect Igbo lives and property in Lagos State from frequent OPC harassments at no cost. I was never paid a single dime by the Igbo community in Lagos State; instead what I received were pockets of betrayal by some sections of Igbo leaderships.
I constructed a very formidable Igbo-Yoruba understanding in Lagos State that even right here from my exile I can mobilize some sections of OPC at short notice. If I say I have more trusted Yoruba friends than Igbo, I am not in any manner far from the truths. I have fought many battles for the Igbo without any single intention to ask for recompense. I know the position of Shettima Yerima of the Arewa Consultative Forum today among his people; but he knows my worth.
When Femi Fani-Kayode was insulting Mrs. Bianca Ojukwu and by extension ridiculing the Igbo and nobody could stand up against him, the former Governor of Anambra State His Excellency, Okwadike Igboukwu Dr Chukwuemeka Ezeife ordered me to handle the situation, immediately and stop the nonsense; which I did with utter diligence and, today Femi Fani-Kayode speaks about the Igbo with caution. Did Bianca Ojukwu send any form of gratitude to me or did I make any attempt to reach out to her up till this moment? Does she even know me personally? Where was Tony Nnadi? Somebody who is afraid to face a common ant is threatening me.
Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu is dead now; may his gentle soul rest in peace. But Okwadike Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife is still strongly alive, Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe is still alive; Major General Ike Nwachukwu is still alive; my major mentor whom I served as Adviser Chief Frank Ovie Kokori is still alive and, even Joe Igbokwe can attest to that effect. I did not come close to these people because I needed to beg them money to run my Igbo People’s Congress; they invited me because they heard of my activities. I did not request for free accommodation for my organization in Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu’s Victoria Island Complex like Tony Nnadi did.
Even in my present struggle, I might not count the number situations I received crucial support from some benevolent Igbo kinsmen, but my Yoruba friends and comrades both known and unknown have provided me with the highest amount of financial support at crucial moments with relative ease, compared to my Igbo kinsmen who often see me as an unfortunate beggar, as Tony Nnadi and his hirelings currently assumes.
At this point I will not hesitate to mention some names in this regards. Since my moving into exile in 2018, the highest amount I have received from any single Igbo person or group is one thousand US dollars and they were two men, namely Ochinanwata Ejimofor and Dr Odunukwe both from the United States.
On the other hand, a Yoruba man from Delta State sponsored my legal action at the Federal High Court Asaba against President Muhammadu Buhari over his islamization policies with the sum of three million naira in 2016. I engaged one Mr. Kelechi Nnadi a relation of Tony Nnadi and gave him the sum of two million naira down payment to commence the case. He later sold me out to the DSS and arranged for me to be picked up in his office which, fortunately for me could not be executed due to my vigilance and unsuspecting simple appearance which made the DSS officials not to recognize me on two occasions: first close to Kelechi Nnadi’s Office and second, at the Federal High Court premises, Asaba. This prompted Elder Solomon Asemota, SAN, a well-known Edo-born legal luminary to take over the case at no cost. This is my major reason for being in exile today and for which Tony Nnadi refers to me as a miserable man.
Right from the point the Federal Government ordered the stoppage of my salary in January 2017 following the DSS inability to arrest, which subsequently led to my going into hiding, through my stays in Ghana, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Togo to Rwanda, Pastor Bayo from Ondo State continued to give me periodic financial support without the least equivocation. This is a man who, once I informed him that I was in serious financial needs, would move around quickly and send some money to me.
Prof Mercy Adesanya-Davies from Kwara State not only equally provided frequent financial support but linked me up with Prof Philip Gbonsong of University of Cape Coast who intervened in a crucial moment when my life was in serious danger and provided the money with which I purchased flight ticket that enabled me to flee Ghana to Sierra Leone. She also linked me up with Bishop Paul Nya of Togo who provided me the needed assistance throughout the Covid-19 period.
In Freetown, Sierra Leone, when I could no longer bear the constant attempts on my life, I was forced to flee to Sanctuary Praise Church owned by a Yoruba man Pastor Victor Ajisafe who housed me for two months before I again fled to Senegal through Guinea-Conakry by road. Meanwhile I was constantly present in Igbo Union meetings every month where my plight was well known to them, yet none volunteered to help me.
Dr. Bolaji Akinyemi from Ogun State who I have never met one-on-one has not only consistently supported me financially but one day asked me to state the most important help I needed from him. I subsequently presented my book manuscript on Yoruba-Fulani Islamic Subjugation for publication, which he solely did at the cost of three million naira in 2022. At one point when I needed money and Dr. Bolaji had none, he sent me his empty bank account detail to prove to me that he had no money. I don’t know how many men can do so to their wives much more friends they have never met before physically.
When I arrived in Rwanda on July 2021 and discovered that the Igbo man who promised to accommodate me for a while had absconded, I was subsequently directed to a Redeemed Christian Church of God in Kigali, where the two Yoruba Pastors wasted no time in giving me some money for two weeks hotel accommodation. Similarly, Mr. Kure from Ondo State who lives in Japan and who is not yet known to me physically, but has been following my writings, sent me some money on two occasions without my prompting.
These are Yoruba and not Igbo. Yet Tony Nnadi and his weird hirelings had the gullible audacity to say that I am engaged in my present state of trial because of my intention to extort money from Ndigbo. Does it snot surprise anyone that those collaborating with the Fulani to have me dead are Igbo? Needless to state that the kingpin collaborating with the same Fulani to eliminate me in the Philippines today is Mr. Jackson Nebolise from Oko in Anambra State. My experiences taught me that I should never be an ethnic bigot even though I remain unequivocally an Igbo patriot defending Igbo cause with every objective sense of commission.
Tony Nnadi is yet to defend himself from Henry Okah’s weighty allegations concerning his hidden Biafra project currently masquerading as Lower Niger Congress under NINAS. Saying he will contact Henry Okah first before putting up any defence is a clear acceptance of guilt. Where will Tony Nnadi see Okah to ask him if he truly said what I said he said? To put it in a funny way! The same Okah he abandoned at the crucial moment?
Coming to the matter of the so-called expulsion of Prof Banji Akintoye from NINAS, going through Tony Nnadi’s prognosis of facts I tend to understand why he couldn’t excel in his legal profession but instead decided to seek refuge in clandestine self-determination activism. In my last essay, I took time put down in details the resignation of Prof Banji Akintoye from NINAS together with forty-four other members of his group dated November 30, 2021. Since that date Tony Nnadi has not yet informed Nigerians who succeeded Prof Akintoye as NINAS Chairman. He did not also counter Prof Akintoye’s resignation as expulsion, until the publication of Nigerian Tribune issue of June 25, 2023 when one Dare Adekanmbi reported Prof Akintoye as Chairman of NINAS.
As a lawyer, Tony Nnadi should have known the contextual use of the word “expulsion” in relation to political organizations. Does the word apply in coalitions like two political parties or organizations coming together to form partnerships for the purpose of forming a government or achieving a common objective, in the same form it applies to such unitary organisations as political parties, social clubs and town unions? In law there is nothing like expulsion in a partnership but breakup or resignation. Does expulsion under any circumstance apply in a marriage contract, which is a test case of a social partnership?
Therefore the insinuation that Prof Akintoye was expelled from NINAS cannot be sustained because NINAS is constructed on a partnership with equal rights and obligations, in which no group has the deciding powers to expel the other. Meanwhile Tony Nnadi is yet to avail Nigerians with the letter and date of Prof Akintoye’s expulsion and the NINAS official who signed it. Nigerians are still waiting since November 2021 to hear from the new Chairman of NINAS. Or is Tony Nnadi telling Nigerians that he is now both the NINAS Coordinating Secretary General and Chairman?
Tony Nnadi is telling Nigerians, particularly his unsuspecting Igbo followers that his so-called expulsion of Prof Akintoye from NINAS is predicated on the latter’s decision to support Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Presidential ambition. If that is true, which is no doubt not, did Prof Akintoye owe any obligation to NINAS to chat his own chosen political cause outside that of NINAS?
Moreover does it not prove how naïve the likes Tony Nnadi who are hiding under the ignominious cocoon of NINAS are, considering the fact that these are the same people who believe that the Igbo are not yet ripe to produce the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria until the 1999 Constitution is changed to whatever? Does it not prove that the average Yoruba man is politically wiser than his Igbo counterpart?
When Henry Okah wrote that the Igbo are the major stumbling blocks against themselves and made mention of his ugly experience with Tony Nnadi, I began to believe that the first revolution should begin among the Igbo themselves.
Tony Nnadi with one hand openly opposes Peter Obi’s Presidential ambition through his spurious claim of fighting to change the 1999 Constitution and, with one hand secretly tells Peter Obi through his protégés that he is actually in support of his Presidential ambition. Is that not a clear scam? He says I am a peddler of falsehood. Can he deny that he made the following statements condemning Peter Obi and Obidients?
“We repeat, the presidency is not won on the premise of wishful thinking and hullabaloo of an untamed mob, who probably do not even understand the need for a pathway for the Igbo nation, pushing for a new narrative for the Igbo nation. If Peter Obi is being asked to drop his presidential ambition and join the campaign for fundamental Constitutional Reconstruction that will free the Igbo and other constituent components of Nigeria from the toxic bondage of Unitary Nigeria, that will be much better understood….”
Is it not a sham ideological mentality for one Igbo man called Tony Nnadi to be preaching “Change the 1999 Constitution” while his contemporaries in other ethnic groups are struggling to first grip the same Constitution through political power before the talk of changing it?
He calls the Obidient movement an untamed mob yet no single Igbo man called him to order. But when such Yoruba personalities as Prof Wole Soyinka and Femi Kuti made less provocative condemnations of the Obedient Movement every one of us called for their crucifixion. Is this not what could rightly be called reverse tribalism, when one ethnic group deliberately covers up more heinous crime against them by one of them and cries foul of a less grievous crime by a member of another ethnic group? My West Niger Igbo adage says: “I ma na-ala nne na-eshigbu nwa” (You can’t be fucking a mother and at the same time be suffocating the child).
The same adage applies also to those Igbo patriots and saboteurs who claim to be supporting the Obidient Movement and at the same time remain unrepentant disciples of Tony Nnadi’s phantom Constitutional change. The Igbo have a serious problem and Tony Nnadi, a proven political job-man who is hankering for economic survival and cheap political relevance is a major part of that problem.
For the past twenty-one years many Igbo people have been following Tony Nnadi shouting “Change the 1999 Constitution”, yet the Constitution remains unchanged while other ethnic groups continue to reap the political benefits of the same Constitution. For how long shall the Igbo continue to be led by such politically blind self-acclaimed leaders as Tony Nnadi?
Written by Nwankwo T. Nwaezeigwe, PhD, DD, Odogwu of Ibusa Clan. Institute of African Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Leader, International Coalition against Christian Genocide in Nigeria (CAC-GEN), You can reach him using Email:Nwaezeigwe.genocideafrica@gmail.com or Website: https://cac-gen.org
