By Valentine Obienyem

Whenever the issue of education arises, I make one simple request: bring your record, and let us compare.

Peter Obi’s investments in education as Governor of Anambra State remain the most comprehensive educational interventions by any Nigerian governor. More importantly, even after leaving office, his continued interventions in schools across Nigeria as a private citizen rival what many serving governors are doing today.

For Peter Obi, education was never a campaign slogan; it was the foundation for development. He believed that the future of any society depends on the quality of its schools, teachers, and learning environment. His administration therefore invested massively at every level of education – from primary schools to universities.

Some of the landmark achievements include:

Basic and Secondary Education

• Returned mission schools to their original owners while maintaining government support, restoring discipline and excellence to many schools. He also gave them over 2 billion Naira to rehabilitate returned schools. This is why no school in any part of the country compares to aesthetics of Anambra schools.

• for those saying he built no school, Obi constructed five classroom blocks in each of Anambra State’s 177 communities, one of the largest school infrastructure programmes ever undertaken by a state government. The town chairmen at that time can attest to that. Who has done so in Nigeria before?

• Renovated hundreds of dilapidated schools across the state, including schools in which trees had grown. Examples include Comprehensive Secondary School, Onitsha, and Oraukwu Grammar School.

• Distributed about 40,000 computers to schools—an unprecedented digital education initiative at the time.

• Equipped 450 secondary schools with Microsoft Academies, introducing ICT education long before it became fashionable.

• Connected all the schools across the state to the internet. If you doubt it, the pictures are with us.

• Supplied generators to schools throughout the state, many of which are still in use today. If you doubt it, people will post the pictures.

• Established libraries in schools to encourage reading and academic excellence.

• re-started schools’ sporting activities.

• Installed boreholes in over 300 schools, including all girls’ schools, ensuring students had access to clean water and reducing exposure to risks associated with fetching water.

• Distributed two buses to every public secondary school in Anambra State. Who else has done so in Nigeria?

• Released ₦525 million directly to schools for the construction of sick bays. That amount today runs into billions.

• Issued direct intervention funds to principals for erosion control and emergency infrastructure needs.

Teachers and Academic Standards

• Recruited 2,000 teachers for primary schools. He kept money to cover their salaries for two years in order not to burden his successor.

• Recruited 5,000 teachers and an additional 2,000 special subject teachers for secondary schools. He kept money to cover their salaries for two years in order not to burden his successor.

• Ensured prompt payment of teachers’ salaries and allowances. Cleared all the arrears of pensions and gratuities owed to teachers in the state.

• Restored teacher promotions, removing the ceiling that had prevented progression beyond Grade Level 16.

• Regularly recognised and rewarded outstanding principals and teachers.

• Improved accreditation and academic standards across educational institutions.

Technical and Adult Education

• Fully renovated and equipped the Government Technical Colleges at Onitsha, Nkpor, and Umuchu.

• Secured accreditation for multiple technical programmes.

• Strengthened vocational education through Adult Education Centres, Market Schools, and youth empowerment initiatives.

• Equipped 53 nomadic and migrant schools.

• Sustained campaigns against school dropouts through targeted interventions.

Higher Education

Peter Obi’s administration transformed tertiary education across Anambra State.

At Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, his government constructed or completed numerous landmark projects,  over 40. Some of them are:

• Faculty of Law Complex.

• Faculty of Engineering.

• Faculty of Agriculture.

• Faculty of Management Sciences.

• Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

• Mass Communication Complex with radio and television studios.

• Administrative Complex.

• Engineering workshops and laboratories.

• Departmental buildings.

• Hostels.

• E-learning and Research Centre.

• Internal road networks.

• Water supply infrastructure.

• Electricity-generating facilities.

• Campus landscaping.

• Master plan for university development.

• Tarring of access roads to the campuses.

His administration also:

• Released ₦5 billion to Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University for infrastructure development. Unprecedented!

• Facilitated the construction of two 250-bed hostels through the Central Bank of Nigeria under the leadership of Dr. Kingsley Moghalu. What has anybody attracted after him?

Nwafor Orizu College of Education, Nsugbe

His government provided:

• Major classroom and lecture hall construction.

• New staff office complexes.

• Library renovation.

• Boreholes.

• Electricity-generating sets.

• Security improvements.

• Accreditation of academic programmes.

• Improved research environment.

• Employment of staff.

• Construction of an auditorium.

• Significant upgrades to instructional facilities, with departments receiving national recognition for their equipment and facilities.

He provided buses, generators and ambulances to both  Odumegwu Ojukwu University  Nwafor Orizu College of Education as well of many for the teaching hospital.

College of Agriculture, Mgbakwu

Peter Obi remains the governor most closely associated with the physical transformation of the institution, with about 15 buildings constructed during his administration.

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu Teaching Hospital

His administration built the teaching hospital from scratch, with over 25 buildings.

He also built classrooms in major nursing and health institutions in the state. Some of them—St. Charles Borromeo Hospital and Iyi Enu—are today teaching hospitals. I believe strongly that, in no distant time, Diocesan Hospital, Amichi; St. Joseph’s Hospital, Adazi-Nnukwu; and Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital will become teaching hospitals. I have no doubt about that, knowing the level of support they received.

Support Beyond Government-Owned Institutions

Peter Obi believed that every school educating Anambra children deserved support, regardless of ownership.

Accordingly, his administration extended financial assistance to institutions such as:

• Madonna University.

• Paul University.

• Tansian University.

• Peter University.

These institutions reportedly received grants amounting to about ₦100 million each at the time, which translates into billions today, in addition to vehicle support.

Rewarding Academic Excellence

Peter Obi also introduced a policy of rewarding academic excellence by presenting ₦1 million to every Anambra indigene who graduated with a First Class degree.

The Record Speaks

Education is not measured by speeches but by investments, infrastructure, teacher welfare, technology, and opportunities created for young people.

Peter Obi invested simultaneously in classrooms, teachers, libraries, computers, internet connectivity, laboratories, universities, technical education, adult education, water supply, transportation, and academic excellence.

His commitment did not end when he left office. Across Nigeria today, he continues to support schools, donate educational facilities, build classrooms, provide learning equipment, and assist educational institutions as a private citizen.

The challenge, therefore, remains simple:

Bring your record on education. Let us compare—project for project, school for school, investment for investment, and impact for impact.

By Jerome Edet

I have closely watched the Governor of Imo State, Senator Hope Uzodimma, since he assumed office on January 15, 2020.

For more than six years now he has been on the saddle, Governor Uzodimma has remained focused on the reason he was elected – to serve his people and provide leadership that may have eluded the State before he became Governor.

Uzodimma’s politics is devoid of the usual air of arrogance and inelastic egotism some politicians are known for.

No noise. No propaganda. No unnecessary name calling. No courting of controversy. No abusing of anyone, whether politician or ordinary people. Just focusing on the reason for winning election which is service at whatever level he finds himself, including outside his State.

You must understand Uzodimma’s governance philosophy properly to appreciate how his media minders also approach issues around their principal.

Whether the issue affects Imo State that Uzodimma governs, or the Country, as the case may be, his minders only deploy elevated languages that deal with the issue in question rather than unnecessary invectives and name-calling. You will not be wrong to say that his minders also operate with their principal’s template.

In fact, if I were to be interested in politics, I will adopt hook, line and sinker Uzodimma’s style of no unnecessary distractions.

I am constrained to look at the trending narrative between the former two term governor of Rivers State and current minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, and the Governors of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for which Wike has again behaved true to type, noise-making as politics.

I have taken time to watch and listen over again the media briefing of the Progressive Governors Forum and at no time was any reference made of the person of Wike. Not one place was his name mentioned.

Rather, the emphasis was on the coalition arrangement capable of undermining the commonality of interest of the APC members with regard to winning their elections – President, Governor, NASS and House of Assembly.

But, pronto, a man whose name is synonymous with noise jumped into the fray, and rather than focus on the harmless message that the APC is not cut out for any unholy marriage, descended on Uzodimma, a mere purveyor of the message in his capacity as the Chairman of Progressive Governors’ Forum. That is madness taken too far, and an indication that Wike was harbouring ill feelings for Uzodimma or seeking for his attention.

Before this latest outburst by Wike, he had, weeks back, taken his propaganda style of politics to a ridiculous level, calling out Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq of Kwara State who doubles as the Chairman of Nigerian Governors Forum and Uzodimma, accusing them of not leaving the APC doors wide open for intruders of similar mindset with him who masquerade as members of the Rainbow Coalition to jump in.

It is a big misnomer if one whose friend invited to join him to eat food expects the host friend to quit eating before him as guest.

Unfortunately, that is exactly the picture Wike is painting in the country today with his amorphous political contraption called Rainbow Coalition.

The APC family has a presidential candidate in the person of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and across the length and breath of the country, members are committed to working for his victory at the polls next year.

Even States whose Governors are not controlled by the APC-led government have quietly and tactically indicated interest in working for the victory of Tinubu.

Regardless, they are neither polluting the environment the way Wike is doing, nor are they interfering in the internal mechanism of the APC so as to be noticed as routing for the President. And that is exactly where Wike’s claim of support for Tinubu and not the APC is suspect.

Few years ago, precisely in March 2020, Wike told a media briefing at Government House Port Harcourt that, “APC does not mean well for Nigeria.

It is a party of strange bedfellows merely formed to take over power. I am not interested in what happens in the APC.”

Of course instances abound when and where Wike said worse things about the APC, and one therefore begins to imagine the philosophy behind this sudden love he says he has for the President as the leader of the Party that members of the APC do not show him.

The only way one can explain what Wike is doing with Tinubu is nothing other than seeking political protection to remain relevant after willfully destroying his own political Party?

And this is where Mr. President and some ill principled members of the APC should be careful the way they treat Wike and his antecedents with kid’s gloves.

Mind you, this was the same tactics Wike deployed when there was still a Party called the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), with some reasonable persons proudly identifying with it, but who were lacking in the knowledge about his intention to infect the Party with a virus akin to the last stage of cancer because he claimed to be the sole funder.

Today, that once behemoth of a political Party, an assemblage of the high and mighty, the who is who in Nigeria both in politics and business, across ethnic and religious divide, has now been reduced to a joke, a carcass, by an irascible character who views political activities only from his own perspective.

On several occasions, I have asked myself how characters like Wike happened to Nigeria. No doubt, I am sure so many of my country men and women are wont to ask themselves similar questions.

Sorry I digress. Let me go straight to the reason for this intervention.

Every opportunity Wike gets to face the camera to discuss matters ailing him politically, Uzodimma will flash into his mind.

And when he gathers momentum to speak, the only thing he remembers is that the Supreme Court in 2020 validated the stolen mandate which Imo people freely gave to Uzodimma during the 2019 governorship election, but which victory Wike and some of his Rainbow Coalition agents connived to steal from Uzodimma.

As I said earlier, should I join politics, I will adopt Uzodimma’s template which includes his mannerisms.

Here is a man whose election victory was manipulated out of his hand, and because of his trust in the Nigerian judiciary, unlike the Wikes of this world who pretend they do, headed for the courts, starting with the State Election Tribunal and then to the Court of Appeal and finally, the Apex Court of the land.

Uzodimma lost his case at the State Tribunal. He also lost at the Appeal Court, and yet, persevered in his determination to get justice and see to the end of the matter. Finally, he approached the Supreme Court where he eventually got justice.

It is, therefore, shameful for Wike to continue to denigrate the Supreme Court whose justices take full responsibility for giving Uzodimma what rightly belongs to him that was stolen by political thieves and buccaneers for reasons best known to them.

Is it not an aberration that a man who calls himself a lawyer, and his wife a Judge, will continue to allude to Uzodimma coming “fourth to be first” knowing full well that the matter about the Imo State Governor’s stolen mandate was subjected to the full processes of judicial trial and adjudication?

Wike should be ashamed that his desperation to have the Supreme Court review itself in the Uzodimma matter months after the ruling, deploying sponsored propaganda, covert and overt blackmail of the Justices who gave the judgement, yielded humiliating results in form of costs awarded to the appellants and open rebuke of their counsel by the Supreme Court Justices.

I thought lessons were learnt from that historic Supreme Court judgement on the Uzodimma case, but how wrong can one be going by the way Wike continues to stand that judgement on the head with the careless statements that gush out of his mouth.

I have had the privilege of visiting Imo State and can attest that Uzodimma came prepared to serve his people and to leave a legacy of performance.

Not by making noise, but by quietly delivering infrastructure and projects, across all sectors, that have positioned the State to ascert itself in the comity of States in Nigeria and even outside ready for the future.

I am a firm believer in the saying, “tell me who are your friends and I will tell you who you are.”

You do not need a prophet to tell you that whatever position of responsibility Uzodimma occupies today in the project Nigeria in his capacity as Governor of Imo State is never a product of lobby.

He ran for governor in 2019 and his mandate was stolen. By merit, he got it back through the Court in 2020. In 2024, he contested again for Governor and won landslide ( 27/27) in a manner no Governor, living or dead, who served Imo State, had ever won.

Therefore, when Uzodimma is being addressed as Governor of Imo State, Chairman of Progressives Governors’ Forum, Chairman of South East Governors Forum, Director General of Renewed Hope Ambassadors, Secretary General of Presidential Campaign Council, among others, it is not about loud noise, lobby, propaganda, blackmail, eye service, and fake love, but about his respect for constituted authority, personal mannerisms and fear of God.

So, if Wike and his ilk are worried about Uzodimma’s rising profile they should work on their character.

Edet, writes from Abomima, Rivers State

By Azu Ishiekwene

If South Africa needed any serious signal that the mobs roaming the streets of its cities and townships in search of immigrants were a disgrace, the FIFA World Cup in June 2026, provided a large screen. 

But the country is not looking. Or is looking but cannot see.

In the last three years, according to Xenowatch, about 50 people have been killed in xenophobic-related incidents in South Africa. That’s not counting the displaced and wounded or the hundreds forcibly repatriated, and those whose businesses have been destroyed.

Between June 2026 and now, there have been eight verified deaths linked to xenophobic attacks on Africans. Two of them, Bishop Taiwo Michael Fakunle and James Uchechukwu Nwankwo, were Nigerians. The Ghanaian News Agency reported that two Ghanaians were killed between July and August.

Scapegoating Bafana

What will it take to end this madness, which has set one of Africa’s most promising countries against the rest of the continent?

During the World Cup, Bafana Bafana was the unfortunate target of African fans worldwide who could barely disguise their animosity. The fans wanted Bafana to lose even against less-fancied opponents and would have willed it if they could. A competition that should have united the continent was, in effect, a continuation of war by other means. 

Root of the matter

It’s not exactly a new thing. Xenophobic outbursts began in 1994, the year Nelson Mandela was sworn in as the country’s first black president in its first-ever multi-racial elections and popular suffrage. 

The attacks were then construed as part of the negative offshoots of the prolonged apartheid rule. The expectation followed that, somehow, they would fizzle out, one way or the other. They have not.

After localised incidents in Alexandra Township in 1994, the first significant blowout happened in 2008. And ever since, xenophobia has acquired a life of its own, with sustained cycles of recurrence up till the present. 

It must have been the biggest embarrassment that accompanied Nelson Mandela to his grave – this prolonged moral shock that South Africa can no longer stand other Africans in their neighbourhoods. It’s a continental disgrace for which people like Julius Malema of the Economic Freedom Fighters are repeatedly calling out in vain. 

It’s unbelievable that almost 15 years after his passing, Mandela’s successors have only responded with half-hearted gestures, often appearing helpless while mobs take the law into their own hands.

Local grievances

I understand the practical challenges that sometimes feed the xenophobic demons. In a recent letter shared with me, my friend and one of South Africa’s most outstanding editors, Ferial Haffajee, wrote, with a heavy heart, about how Mayfair, Johannesburg, where she grew up, has changed from a serene neighbourhood into a precinct of chaos with immigrants who bribe city planners, turning every street corner into a commercial jungle. That hurts.

It gets even worse. With an unemployment rate of 33.6 percent, politicians whose job it is to fix the system have mobilised sentiments against immigrants. 

They blame foreigners for “taking the jobs,” putting pressure on healthcare and other services, and contributing to crime. On top of these, Nigerian targets are also accused of drug-running, and the mortal sin of libido levels that put their hosts at a social disadvantage, as if life were a sex Olympiad. It’s not a laughing matter, especially as many of these sentiments were mobilised by politicians during the 2024 elections in South Africa.

Where the truth lies

The truth, however, is far more nuanced than politicians are willing to admit. UN figures estimate that, of the 304 million international migrants worldwide (3.6 percent of the global population), South Africa (pop. 65 million) had about 2.63 million immigrants as of mid-2024. 

The bulk of immigrants there were born in the SADC region, while about 25 per cent are from the rest of Africa. Of this non-SADC immigrant population, only about one percent or 24,718, are Nigerians. And the trope about job hijack needs to be stripped of its false covering.

Black South Africans control the state and constitute most workers and consumers. But white South Africans remain disproportionately influential in private-sector ownership, wealth, and senior corporate management. And this is despite the affirmative black economic empowerment programme that has been in place for 32 years. 

A 2024 employment equity data showed that white employees held 61.1 per cent of top management posts; Africans held 18 per cent; Indians held 11.9 per cent; coloured people held 6.2 per cent; and other foreign nationals held 2.8 per cent.

The household income data is even starker. It shows that the average income of white-headed households was nearly five times that of black-African-headed households in 2022/23.

The large screens at World Cup viewing centres that the lynch mob wouldn’t look at are staring back at them, if only they cared to lift their heads.

Metamorphosis of Ramaphosa

President Cyril Ramaphosa, one of the most documented beneficiaries of the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) programme, has been disappointing. It would be unfair to accuse him of stoking the deadly xenophobic attacks. 

Yet, it would seem that, knowing what he benefited from BEE through Shanduka Resources, along with prominent figures such as Patrice Motsepe, Tokyo Sexwale and Saki Macozoma, he is comfortable not taking a tough stand, lest the Black oligarchs become the targets of the vigilantes.  

The African Union, the continent’s prefect, is helpless. Nigeria’s President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, reporting South Africa to the AU to list the matter for discussions in January 2027, means nothing. If the AU has lost its voice or the capacity to stamp its feet, where are the African leaders in the mould of Sekou Toure, Kwame Nkrumah, Leopold Senghor, Murtala Muhammed and several others? 

Nigeria’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo was right when he said in a recent interview that African leaders had not done enough to stop the xenophobic attacks in South Africa. 

Whether it was São Tomé and Príncipe, where Obasanjo rebuked soldiers who toppled the elected government in 2003 or in The Gambia, where the regional ECOWAS faced down President Yahya Jammeh in 2016, whenever the continent’s leaders stood together, the outcomes have been commendable. Nothing demonstrated that lesson as profoundly as the end of apartheid in South Africa, a lesson which Obasanjo had to remind South Africa once again. 

Not a new problem

Tensions arising from migration have been, and will continue to be, a reality of human existence. Even between Nigeria and Ghana, two neighbouring countries and friendly foes, the first major mass deportation of Nigerians happened in 1969, when the military government targeted Nigerians as the cause of the country’s woes. Only for Nigeria to retaliate 14 years later in the infamous “Ghana-must-go,” which affected nearly one million Ghanaians, accused of “taking Nigerian jobs.”

Yet, looking back today, both countries have seen, as Thomas Sowell said in his epic book, Migrations and Cultures, that “migrations are not always permanent resettlements.”

“Even during the era of mass migrations across oceans during the past century and a half,” Sowell wrote, “vast numbers of people have continued to return home. It has been estimated that, between the mid-1830s and the late 1930s, approximately 30 million people left the Indian subcontinent and nearly 24 million returned.”

No condition is permanent

Anti-immigrant scapegoating may seem normal, especially among politicians in the post-Trump era. Still, I share the sentiment expressed on the back of the proverbial mammy wagon that often travelled East of Nigeria in the old days: “No condition is permanent.”

I will recommend this banner to the mobs in KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and the Western Cape, some of the deadliest xenophobic crime scenes in recent times. 

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