By Azu Ishiekwene

The proper thing to do when readers respond to a newspaper article is to respect their right of reply. There were two irate responses to my article last week, “Not the Iran We Thought It Was: What Has Changed in the Persian Gulf.”

One, entitled “Not the Azu We Thought He Was,” by Yakubu Musa, a guest author for 21^st Century Chronicle, an online newspaper, and the other, “Basking in the Euphoria of Narrative Origami,” by Mahfuz Mundadu, a friend of one Hassan Karofi, who claimed he is a journalist.

Both articles could have been from the spiteful fingers of one hand. Of particular interest, however, was the second article. It was WhatsApped to me by Karofi on behalf of his friend, a certainMundadu, whose photo he refused to provide and whose name he faked. He also faked a Kaduna address for his fake friend. Despite the layers of disingenuity, “Mundadu” deserves, if not a right of reply, the courtesy of his or her opinion:

“To read Mr. Azu Ishiekwene’s article ‘Not the Iran We Thought It Was’ is to witness a masterclass in doublethink. That Orwellian art of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind and believing both. To know that Israel is a nuclear power armed to the teeth and yet present it as a trembling David before an Iranian Goliath.

“To remember decades of pre-emptive strikes, assassinations, and occupation, and yet narrate them as self-defence. To bend history into a shape so unfamiliar, it must be admired.We call it narrative origami, and then we present the resulting illusion with a straight face beneath a yam cap.

“Nothing completes the theatre of intellectual mimicry like cultural fabric draped over borrowed imperial scripts. Mr. Azu doesn’t merely distort reality; he stages its semblance. Armed with metaphors, blindfolded by bias, and conducted by the invisible hand of Western hegemony.

“Azu’s article, ‘Not the Iran We Thought It Was,’ reads like a desperate telegram from the last surviving bureaucrat of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. Only this time, instead of “Oceania is at war with Eastasia (sic),” we are told “Iran is David (sic); Israel is Goliath,” while the United States, ever the omniscient puppet master, is left conveniently backstage, sipping its habitual cocktail of oil, contracts, and self-righteousness.

“Let us begin with the metaphor. Mr. Azu, in a stroke of Biblical theatre, casts Iran as a Goliath of sorts, towering, terrifying, menacing, and poor little Israel as the shepherd boy of peace with nothing but a sling and a smile. Never mind that this “David” owns an arsenal of nuclear warheads and is bankrolled by the world’s most militarised empire.

“Never mind that this Goliath-sized David has, since 1948, bulldozed villages, murdered children, and claimed the role of eternal victim while hoarding some of the world’s most advanced weapons. It seems Mr. Azu mistook his ‘Testament’ for a press release from the Israeli Ministry of Defence.

“Had I not read the name, I might have thought this piece was penned by a clever intern at Lockheed Martin, fresh off a propaganda boot camp and eager to impress his line manager. But alas, it bears the name of a seasoned editor.

Even though I am not a philosopher, I’ve heard somewhere that lies can be mistaken for wisdom when repeated with sufficient polish, frequency, and decibels. Mr. Azu’s article does not merely repeat lies. It baptises them in footnotes and anecdotes and then dresses them in history. Thereafter, he sends them out to war on behalf of the criminal enterprise of Zionism.

“Now, let us speak of memory, the selective kind. Azu writes of October 7, 2023, as though history were born that morning. He forgets, or pretends to forget, that Netanyahu has been threatening Iran since ‘Fantalo, Garmaho and Sakadali’ were fashionable. He forgets the years of assassinations, sabotage, cyber-attacks, and open incitement. He forgets, like an old man with convenient amnesia, that this conflict was manufactured in laboratories of paranoia long before Hamas fired a single rocket.

“Azu wants us to believe that Hamas is a remote-controlled invention of Tehran, programmed to harass ‘innocent’ settlers. What he fails to mention, or perhaps deliberately buries under rhetorical debris, is that Israel itself initially nurtured Hamas to fracture Palestinian resistance. Yes, Israel midwifed its own Frankenstein, then turned to the world and screamed ‘monster’!”

“Let us not waste too much ink debating whether Iran is a saint or a sinner. That is not the point. The point is that Azu’s article presents a caricature, a reduction, a fairy tale where the villain wears a turban, and the hero rides an F-35. It is not a critique of policy. It is a bedtime story for geopolitical infants.

“And yet, Mr. Azu expects his readers to clap like trained seals. To swallow each sentence like sugar-coated arsenic. To believe, in 2025, that the same old tricks still fool the world. But alas, the internet has arrived. The children of this generation carry in their palms a library of resistance. The age of monopoly over meaning is over. The age in which we carry our transistor radios around, waiting for Western media outlets to dish out imperialist propaganda as world news, is over.

“It would serve Mr. Azu well to recall that journalism, like history, is not a mirror but a lamp. Its duty is not to reflect the faces but faeces of the powerful and illuminate the oppressed’s footprints. Right now, the footprints are red, the trail is long, and the truth bleeds through the white noise of mainstream punditry.

“Let Mr. Azu, if he is so fond of metaphor, visit Gaza and bring back a sling. Let him visit Tel Aviv and count the silos. Let him read the nuclear declarations of Israel, if he can find them, for they are kept like family secrets in dynasties of denial.

“Until then, we the readers, armed with logic, reasoning, and the inquiry of philosophers, shall continue to ask uncomfortable questions, to deflate inflated narratives, and to demand that those who write for the public do so not with fear of favour, but with favour for the truth.

“Mr. Azu, you are not the journalist we thought you were.”

….. Laws of Human Stupidity

In a post on Premium Times, which also published the article, pharmacist, banker, and author, Olu Akanmu, referenced the “Five Basic Laws of Human Stupidity” by Carlo M. Cipolla, and wrote: “Good article by Azu. Iran has truly (surprisingly) been made to look so ordinary. It overrated itself and fails with its Hamas ally, the military maxim that war is not just about your attack, but whether you have the counterforce to neutralise what will be a counterattack to your attack. Can’t but relate Hamas to one of the quadrants of Cipolla’s law of stupidity.”

Ishiekwene is Editor-in-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book, Writing for Media and Monetising It.

By Steve Osuji

Brigandage. Barbarism. Primitivism. Parochialism. Provincialism. These and many more synonymous words raced through the mind when news broke about the demolition of a property belonging to the family of Peter Obi (PO).

This property, said to belong to the brother of PO, former governor of Anambra State and presidential candidate of Labour Party in the 2023 elections, which was razed to rubble using stealth instruments of the Lagos judiciary has all the elements and pockmarks of the ruling party, APC, the Lagos State government and indeed, Aso Rock.

Ikeja GRA is probably the primest (!) piece of property on the mainland part of Lagos. Ikeja is also the administrative seat of the Lagos Government. It therefore stands to reason that every inch of land in Ikeja, especially the GRA area is assumed to be well noted and annotated in the Lagos land registry.

EXPRESSO can assert that no one can move a bulldozers into Oduduwa Street, in Ikeja GRA without the knowledge of the governor of Lagos State. In fact, Aso Rock is probably complicit in the barbarism of last Tuesday.

This column wagers straight away that the Lagos State government, nay, the Presidency is trying by all means possible, to demolish Peter Obi, the most potent opponent of Tinubu both in the 2023 presidential election and the coming one in 2027.

Obi is therefore, an endangered species; Obi is currently a high-risk element.

But suffice to say that this government needs no intel; it’s indeed a no-brainer and a tragic irony that Obi’s life and very survival is inexorably tied to the life and very survival of Nigeria! As it stands, there’s not one without the other. It is therefore incumbent upon the Tinubu administration to manage Obi like an egg of the most fragile kind.

The dubiously demolished property in question belongs to Next Foods, run by Obi’s younger brother.

It was reportedly purchased for N280m in 2011and it is imbued with every title document including Certificate of Occupancy (C-o-O) which is usually signed personally by state governors.

How on earth would a state high court rule in a multi-billion naira land matter without sighting a defendant and without the gumption to put a call to the land registry down the road?

At play here, of course, is neither law nor justice. It’s roguery at the least and political vendetta at it’s vilest.

PETER OBI’S OFFENCE: We wager that Obi is being harried because he dared to exercise his inalienable right in a country he is supposedly a citizen; he dared to contest election seeking to be president of Nigeria.

This is why he’s being treated like an outlaw; like a second class citizen in Nigeria. Obi is being treated like an outcast, worse than an illegal immigrant who has no right to property nor economic investment.

IT’S YET ANOTHER ATTACK ON NDIGBO:  Recall that Lagos State government moved to seize Villaska Lodge in Ikoyi, Lagos, the property owned by Sir Louis Ojukwu, the father of preeminent Igbo leader, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. It took a prolonged legal battle and a sustained wave of public opinion for Ojukwu junior to recover and enjoy a  property bequeathed to him by his famous father.

Since APC ascended to power in 2015, it has been an unveiled policy of Igbo diminution.

President Muhammad Buhari didn’t hide his disdain for Ndigbo. Even if he tried, several Freudian slips that revealed the dark recesses of his mind gave him away about Ndigbo.

For eight years, Buhari made sure Igbo got no reasonable federal appointments.

Worse, when he wasn’t enacting python dance military operations in the Southeast, he was describing the Igbo nation derogatorily as a dot in a circle, meaning they are sitting targets for easy decimation.

Buhari would link Nigeria’s rail network to Maradi in Niger Republic while neglecting the southeast in Nigeria.

Buhari seared the psyche of Ndigbo, leaving them with indelible gashes.

Ndigbo thought President Tinubu would be more enlightened and deal more fairly with them. If only for being co-southerners; or perhaps, to woo them and soften their hearts against second term votes.

No dice. Tinubu has so far shown Ndigbo uncommon hatred. Indeed, in pursuit of Igbo, he has broken every rule in the constitution pertaining to inclusion. Even a so-called APC state like Imo has no  senior minister.

The only Igbo minister in the Tinubu cabinet that makes any sense is David Umahi in the Works Ministry but he’s a certified house negro.

At every turn he would speak to his Igbo brethren as if they were Tinubu’s field negroes. In the midst of Tinubu’s shege, Umahi would tell his people that the president is the best thing that happened to them since they were created. Tufiakwa!

IGBOLAND: WHERE THERE’S NO LEADER: Igbo is being used as a toilet mop today because there’s not a leader left in the land. Since the demise of Dim Ojukwu, southeast has been bereft of a voice in national affairs.

It is sad that the class of leaders that has emerged since 1999 has been particularly poor.

Consider the likes of Orji Uzor Kalu (OUK), Chimaraoke Nnamani, Rochas Okorocha, Okezie Ikpeazu, Hope Uzodinma, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, Sullivan Chime, etc.

OUK for instance was in the 1999 class of governors like Tinubu.

But did you see this same fellow who ought to be a Statesman in his own right going about donning  a stupid aso-ebi for Tinubu ’27, breathlessly gallivanting across the country begging to be noticed.

Talk of a total absence of self-esteem. None of the characters listed above can stand up and speak as an Igbo leader. After eight years as state governors, they morph into EKUKE, the mangy dog foraging from bin to bin. I weep when I see Okezie Ikpeazu trailing Nyesom Wike like he’s SA, Protocol.

Where are Igbo former Senators, Ministers, retired Generals, Justices, etc. Why have they gone into hiding? They don’t want to die, yet they are dead already!

It’s because of feckless leaders as listed above that Ndigbo are getting the short end of the stick in Nigeria. It’s the reason that APC is emboldened to demolish a property belonging to an Obi sibling.

Would APC dare to breach any property related to Atiku Abubakar or Rabiu Kwankwaso?

A village wag says if you act like a rat, pussycat would make a go at you!

LAST WORD: APC, Lagos State Government and indeed, Aso Rock are hiding behind a finger if they think Nigerians are fooled for a minute about their unveiled strategy to shock, awe and overwhelm Peter Obi as we race towards 2027.

But we shall close with the Igbo saying that, the tortoise shall always be held responsible should the mushroom grow an impaired ear. Meaning: APC is responsible for Peter Obi!

Osuji was an editor at The Guardian and Thisday.
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OSUJISTEVE/26.06.25