In 1992, Kenneth Okonkwo gave Nigeria Andy Okeke — a man who sold his soul for money, buried his wife for ambition, and ended up insane under a Lagos flyover, begging for forgiveness he could not earn. _Living in Bondage_ was a warning etched on VHS: that the hunger for power and gain, when left unchecked, will devour the man who feeds it.
The final scene offered redemption because Andy confessed, repented, and turned from the transaction that destroyed him.
Three decades later, the tragedy is that the actor seems to have walked back into the script.
The inference from his stage act is no longer about escape. It is about relapse. Andy’s bondage began with transactional politics of the soul: a deal with a cult, loyalty sold to the highest bidder, principles traded for access. Today, Kenneth Okonkwo appears trapped in the same cycle, this time in the political arena. His perennial, unfounded critique of Peter Obi — the very man he once defended with fire and conviction as Labour Party spokesman — reads less like principle and more like a man still negotiating terms with new masters. The man who once called Obi “competent, credible, transformational” now stands on television accusing him of hotel-room candidate lists and criminality, claims that have drawn a N5 billion defamation suit. When conviction turns into contradiction overnight, the audience is forced to ask: is this truth, or is this the next transaction?
Then came the romance with Atiku Abubakar and the ADC coalition. Okonkwo declared Atiku “the pathway to the presidency of the South-East” and aligned with him, only to withdraw support weeks later when Rotimi Amaechi was named running mate. He called it marginalization of the South-East. But the pattern is familiar: Andy’s life was a series of alliances made for advantage, alliances broken when the payoff shifted. That is the anatomy of bondage — not loyalty to a cause, but loyalty to a calculation. Transactional politics is modern ritualism. It demands sacrifice of consistency, buries old allies when new ones appear richer, and leaves the man repeating the same cycle under a different flyover.
Bondage, as the film taught us, is not chains on the wrist. It is the inability to stand still. Andy could not sit with contentment; he kept chasing the next deal until it killed him. A man who built his name defending a “New Nigeria” vision now drifts from Labour to ADC, from defending Obi to suing Obi, from coalition partner to coalition critic, all within months. The stage act warned us that the moment a man makes his voice a commodity, he becomes property of whoever pays next.
Redemption in _Living in Bondage_ came only when Andy stopped negotiating and started confessing. Freedom came when he chose truth over transaction. Until that same choice is made off-screen, Kenneth Okonkwo remains in bondage — not the bondage of poverty he acted out in 1992, but the bondage of perennial critique without evidence, of alliances without anchor, of a voice that echoes whichever room pays the fee.
Nigeria does not need another Andy Okeke in real life. We have watched that movie. We know how it ends: with a man broken, alone, and begging for a forgiveness that only comes after he renounces the deal. The most powerful affirmation we can draw from his stage act is this: the script can still be rewritten, but only if he stops living by the logic of the cult and starts living by the logic of conviction.
Until then, the title fits. He is still living in bondage.
Mazi Chuks Nwosu is an Author, Publisher and Media Consultant
