By Achilleus-Chud Uchegbu
Achilleus-Chud Uchegbu writes on why Nwifuru’s threats against Ebonyi’s opposition must not be rewarded in 2027…
Democracy does not survive on the goodwill of those who hold power. It survives on the willingness of those in power to submit, without coercion or intimidation, to the judgment of the people. Good luck Jonathan, as president, he proved this assertion in 2015.
It is against this basic standard that Governor Francis Nwifuru of Ebonyi State must be measured; and by that standard, he has failed.
At a political rally on June 15, 2026, at the Pa Ngele Oruta Township Stadium in Abakaliki, Governor Nwifuru declared that his government had “all it takes to consume” anyone who stood against him politically. His administration has since insisted the word “consume” was merely “metaphorical,” a caution to “opposition elements” allegedly spreading “fake news.” But language matters, especially from the mouth of a sitting governor who commands the machinery of the state, including the police liaison, its resources, its bureaucracy, its capacity to grant or withhold. When a governor tells his opponents he will “consume” them, he is not offering a metaphor. He is issuing a warning, and everyone in the room understands it as one.
This threat is not isolated. The Ebonyi State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has separately alleged that the state government moved to revoke the Certificate of Occupancy of its secretariat in Abakaliki.
It was further reported that PDP members preparing the building for party primaries were chased away by security operatives. Whether every detail of that allegation is ultimately verified or not, the pattern it describes is that of a sitting government using its control over land, security, and administrative levers to squeeze the physical and political space available to its rivals. This is precisely the behaviour that a healthy democracy can not tolerate. A party that is prevented from securing its own secretariat can not be allowed to organise. And, a party that is prevented from organising certainly can not find space to campaign. The implication is that a party prevented from campaigning is inadvertently prevented from offering the electorate a choice.
That is not competition. That is capture. Nwifuru is telling Ebonyi people that he has captured the state.
But unknown to him, the Nigerian civil society has noticed the threats. The Nigerian Youth Organisation, a coalition of youth groups, took the unusual step of publicly calling on President Bola Tinubu and federal security agencies to caution the governor over what it called his “inflammatory rhetoric” against opposition actors, warning that such language “portends danger” and could be misread by overzealous loyalists as a license for harassment or violence. When independent youth coalitions feel compelled to warn a sitting governor about the tone and content of his own speeches, that is not noise. It is a signal that the threat has been felt far beyond party lines.
The deeper problem is what these threats are designed to distract from. Three years into his term, Governor Nwifuru has struggled to answer basic questions about performance. Where are the undisclosed beneficiaries of the state’s overseas scholarship programme? Why does basic education remain in poor condition across the state? Why do two-kilometre road projects across local government areas remain uncompleted years after they were announced? Why were billions budgeted for traditional rulers’ palaces while ordinary infrastructure lags behind? Why is the airline he promised now a matter for voicemail? Why are primary healthcare centres in Ebonyi in a coma? Why are projects delivered by Dave Umahi not being maintained? Why are Ebonyi youths roaming the streets of Nigeria in search of jobs? Why is agriculture in Ebonyi a matter for campaign rhetoric?
These are not rhetorical issues manufactured by an opposition looking for a fight. No, they are the specific, pointed questions Ebonyi’s own opposition has put directly to the governor, and which he has answered not with data, not with commissioned audits, not with a defence of his record, but with threats against the people asking the questions.
That sequence of weak performance followed by aggressive rhetoric against critics is one of the oldest and most dangerous patterns in politics. A leader is confident in his record campaigns on that record. A leader who fears his record tries to make sure the record is never seriously discussed by making the discussion itself feel dangerous. When a governor reaches for intimidation instead of explanation, he is telling the electorate, in the clearest possible terms, that he does not believe he can win the argument on the merits. Ebonyi State deserves a governor who competes on ideas, roads, hospitals, and schools, not one who competes on fear.
This is why the stakes of 2027 in Ebonyi State go beyond the usual contest between parties. They go to whether the basic constitutional guarantee every Nigerian is entitled to, that is, the right to associate, to organise, to campaign, and to vote for the candidate of one’s choice, free of intimidation, will actually be honoured in that state. Section 40 of the Nigerian Constitution guarantees freedom of association. Section 22 obliges the press and, by extension, the political environment to hold power accountable without fear. A governor who threatens to “consume” his opposition, whose government is accused of denying that opposition a functioning secretariat, is not simply engaging in the rough-and-tumble of Nigerian politics. He is testing how far he can erode the conditions that make an election meaningful in the first place. If that erosion goes unanswered at the ballot box, it will not stop with Ebonyi.
That is precisely why the people of Ebonyi State must be allowed, and must insist on their right, to freely and safely support the candidate of their choosing in 2027, including the PDP’s governorship candidate, Chief Ifeanyi Chukwuma Odii. Odii’s candidacy has been framed by his party as an argument that the 2027 election “will not be about propaganda, intimidation, or blackmail” but about “performance, accountability, and the welfare of Ebonyi people.” Whatever one’s ultimate judgment on Odii’s own record and platform, that is the correct standard by which the election should be fought. Governor Nwifuru’s threats is an effort to avoid facing Odii in 2027.
A governor who threatens rather than persuades has already conceded, in substance, that he can not win a free and fair contest of ideas. Rewarding that behaviour with another term would not simply return an underperforming administration to office; it would teach every future officeholder in Ebonyi State and beyond that intimidation is a viable substitute for govern The people of Ebonyi State have the right and the responsibility to reject that lesson decisively at the polls in 2027.