Valentine Obienyem
I read the release by the Agulu youths yesterday, and by this morning, no fewer than fifteen people had already forwarded it to me, each expressing delight and pride in its message. Clearly, it struck a deep chord among Ndi Anambra and beyond. The resonance was not in its rhetoric, but in its truth.
Intrigued by the interest it stirred, I reached out to some members of the Agulu youth for clarification. Their verdict was unanimous and delivered with the conviction of men who know the worth of what they hold: “Peter Obi is our big brother.” To them, Obi is more than a politician; he is Agulu’s identity, a living symbol of rectitude and achievement, a heritage they are resolved to defend. They reason that only a foolish people would allow their treasure to be ridiculed or bastardised. In this, they echo an old wisdom – that to dishonour the noble among us is to diminish ourselves.
Yet, their declaration carried no arrogance. They affirmed that they neither possess the authority nor the desire to bar any man from visiting Agulu. Their message was simpler, nobler: “We know our brother better than you do; do not come to our town only to disparage him.” One of them posed a question that lingers in the mind: “Have you ever seen Peter Obi go to the hometown of another Anambra politician to insult their star? Why then should others come to Agulu to insult ours?”
That question is the fulcrum of their grievance. Politics, in its higher sense, is not a gladiatorial contest of slander but a competition of ideas and service. When it descends into insult, it soils not the target alone but the very fabric of civic life. By rising in defence of Obi, the youths of Agulu were not merely protecting a man, they were affirming a principle: that leadership, wherever it is found, should be respected and not dragged through the mire for transient political gain.
Here lies the grandeur of their statement. It was not parochialism; it was enlightened self-respect. For when a people guard their worthy sons, they declare to the world that honour still has a place in politics. If every community in Nigeria were to show such loyalty to truth and decency, our public life would be richer. Insults would give way to ideas, and slander to vision.
My friend, upon reading my earlier sharing of the release, texted me: “Not necessary. PO is a national phenomenon, no longer Agulu, Anambra, or Igbo property. Do not reduce him to such ethnic enclosure. Can you even tell me the exact community of his rivals—BAT, Atiku, El-Rufai, Amaechi? No. Because their names transcend their villages.”
He is right. Peter Obi has outgrown geography; he has become a national presence, even an international one. Yet my friend misses one subtle truth: that while others may be spared the indignity of denigration from their own, Obi is not. Some among his very people labour daily to soil his name, often through willing instruments, with Ejimofor Opara now serving as the vessel of Governor Soludo’s strange crusade. Against such relentless erosion, the voices of Agulu’s youths become a necessary shield.
And so let the message go forth: Agulu welcomes all, but it will not condone insult to its own. In cherishing and defending Peter Obi, they remind us of an old lesson – that the worth of a people lies not in their riches, but in how they honour those who bring them dignity. Nations, like men, are remembered for their reverence of virtue.
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