June 11, 2026
During World War II, a Norwegian military officer and politician, Vidkun Quisling, helped facilitate the Nazi invasion of his own country and led a domestic collaborationist regime loyal to Führer Adolf Hitler. For his infamous role, he was executed for treason in 1945, and his surname became synonymous with ultimate betrayal. The Norwegian traitor’s perfidy reminds me of Kenneth Okonkwo, the actor turned politician, who has proven to be an Igbo quisling extraordinaire. He is not in government. He hopes to be if his principal, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, wins the 2027 presidential election. That is a legitimate ambition.
But in so doing, he is actively sabotaging the legitimate aspiration of Ndigbo, as evidenced in his virulent attacks on Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC). He has every right not to support Obi’s political ambition. That is the beauty of democracy because the principle of choice is the heartbeat of a democratic society. And in deciding not to throw his weight behind Obi’s aspiration, he is not alone. Politics is a game of interest and it is not often that people subsume their personal interests in the overarching national goal. But what he has no right to do is to continuously lie against Obi and impugn his character in the name of politics. An Igbo has the right to aspire to the presidency. It is left for Nigerians to make their choice and live with the consequences because elections have consequences, a point poignantly made by the irrepressible Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Afenifere leader, lawyer, politician and activist, in his February 13, 2023 interview with TheNiche online newspaper where he said that if Nigerians failed to vote right in that year’s presidential election, the consequences will be dire, even as he would probably be in his grave enjoying himself by then. He died on February 14, 2025, exactly two years after that interview. The jury is already out on the correctness of his assertion.
