By Eshioromeh Sebastian
July 2026 has come and gone, just like that. What a month it was. But if you think the drama ended with the month, you are probably mistaken. These things have a way of spilling over, except something even more dramatic comes along to push them out of the news cycle. And in this country, that is always a possibility.
It started small—as these things often do. On July 4, Peter Obi’s vehicle was clamped at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja. His police orderly had parked in a clearly marked drop-off zone and was away for over thirty minutes. Airport security, acting on established protocol, applied the clamp. That much is uncontested.
Similar incidents occur daily across our airports. Typically, the offender pays the prescribed fine, and the matter ends. But this case involved Peter Obi—a former governor and presidential candidate who has cultivated an image as the conscience of a reformed Nigeria.
Yet when the test came, he chose not to pay. In doing so, he did not merely violate a traffic regulation; he elevated his personal status above the very rule of law he often invokes in public discourse. The fine was not exorbitant, yet he didn’t pay.
There is a certain irony in this. The same man who campaigns against impunity found it expedient to bypass a minor penalty, not through coercion, but through passive refusal. And that, perhaps, is the more troubling aspect. Not the clamping of a car, but the assumption that some rules apply only to those without influence.
But that was not the end of it. Before the month expired, the matter had taken on a dimension that was, by any measure, both more dramatic and more curious than the original violation looked.
Then Obi, unaware that the whole thing had been captured on tape, went on one of his trademark lamentation tours during an interview. His life, he declared, was under threat, all because of what happened at the airport. He didn’t bother to mention which airport, of course. But new records conveniently surfaced showing that he had, in fact, recently visited the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport. The very same place where his car had enjoyed a brief, unwanted relationship with a wheel clamp.
By July 10, Festus Keyamo, the Minister of Aviation, after ordering an investigation and reviewing the CCTV footage, gave Obi a one-week ultimatum to apologise to airport workers and pay a N25,000 fine. The minister said the footage showed Obi’s vehicle left unattended for over thirty minutes. He accused Obi of peddling influence while at the same time crying persecution, and warned that failure to comply would trigger further action. Obi’s supporters pushed back. They said the CCTV footage had been manipulated. They claimed the vehicle was clamped in six minutes, not thirty. And for a moment, Nigerians were divided over whose version of a parking violation was true.
Obi has said nothing about the footage Festus Keyamo put out. Nothing about whether the image was manufactured, or whether the people in it were real travellers or some kind of apparition that lost its bearings and strayed into the airport. Some of his supporters later stepped forward and offered to pay the fine, but Obi himself has remained silent. That silence, in itself, is telling.
While we wait for the next phase of this altercation, let us rewind to October 2018. Obasanjo had just endorsed Atiku for president. Only months earlier, he had said God would not forgive him if he backed Atiku. He had waved him off with “Ah, I dey laugh o!” Yet, later in Abeokuta, he stood beside Atiku and called him “President-to-be.”
How did that happen? Kukah had pressed Obasanjo for years. Gumi made his own appeals. Oyedepo was in the picture too. Afenifere leaders took a different route; they argued that beating Buhari, a man with whom Obasanjo was no longer on good terms, in 2019 was what mattered, and Atiku was the man for it.
Obasanjo eventually caved. He announced that Atiku had come with a contrite heart and had found himself again. He praised Atiku as one with the exposure and experience to outperform Buhari. He even said “President-to-be.”
Something has changed again, and what changed between then and now, I cannot say. Perhaps only Obasanjo knows. But whatever reconciliation they reached in 2018, it appears to have run its course. The forgiveness he extended to Atiku that day in Abeokuta appears to have been time-bound, and that time has now run out.
The recent exchange between them, speaks for themselves. Obasanjo has gone back to his old tune, casting doubt on Atiku’s judgment and character. It is a familiar cycle—he makes peace, then picks the fight all over again. He endorses, then withdraws. He embraces, then pushes away. Those who have followed his career closely are not surprised. In Nigerian politics, forgiveness is seldom a permanent state. It is more often a strategic pause, and when the strategy changes, so does the forgiveness.
On July 23, 2026, Obasanjo, in his usual way, dropped a bombshell. In a letter responding to former Ogun State Governor Olusegun Osoba, Obasanjo alleged that Atiku Abubakar had given the late Speaker Ghali Na’Abba N5 million to finance an impeachment plot against him during his first term. According to Obasanjo, Atiku invited Na’Abba to his office on a Friday while he was away and handed over the money “to begin his impeachment work.” He claimed it was “noted, recorded and reported” to him by his Chief of Staff, a professional intelligence officer.
One cannot help but wonder: if it was noted and recorded, why wait until now to tell us? Why wait until the only man who could confirm or deny the story is dead?
Atiku did not take long to respond. He came out swinging with a statement titled “The Grave Is Not a Witness Box.” You have to admit, it was a good title. He asked why Obasanjo waited until Na’Abba died to make the allegation. He challenged the former President to produce evidence and went further to accuse Obasanjo of rewriting history for political gain ahead of the 2027 election. He linked the feud to his refusal to support Obasanjo’s third-term agenda. And then came the counterpunch from Atiku’s camp reminding Nigerians that he had practically kept the Obasanjo household running during his days in prison.
Just a week later, on July 31, Obasanjo struck again. During a fireside chat with Charly Boy in Lagos, he was asked to name the biggest mistake of his presidency. His answer was blunt: picking Atiku as his running mate in 1999. “The man I picked as my running mate, my number two, if I had known him as I came to know him later, I would not have picked him,” he said. When Charly Boy pressed if he meant Atiku, Obasanjo did not hesitate: “My vice president. I don’t know what name you want to give him, but my vice president, I mean that.”
Atiku, unsurprisingly, was not about to let that pass. In a statement issued through his spokesman, he fired back, saying he had watched Obasanjo’s comments with “profound sadness, not anger,” and accused the former president of attempting to rewrite history. The root of Obasanjo’s resentment, Atiku argued, was his refusal to support the controversial third-term agenda, a position he said he remains proud of. “I chose Nigeria over personal loyalty,” he declared. And then, perhaps unable to resist, Atiku reminded everyone that he had clothed Obasanjo, fed him, and mobilised the political structures that produced his presidency after he was released from prison. “Do I regret helping Chief Obasanjo? Absolutely not,” he said.
Decades after they shared a government, shared meals, shared flights across the world, and shared a platform on which they promised Nigerians a new dawn, here they are with one telling the world the other was his greatest mistake in office, the other responding by reminding everyone he once bought the first man’s clothes and put food on his table. But then, this is Obasanjo we are talking about. The man does not do subtlety, he does not do hints, and when he decides to speak, he does not just open the door—he removes the entire door, the frame, and the hinges, and throws them at you for good measure.
As I write this, I do not know if we should expect more salvoes from both men. But if this fight continues, it is Atiku who will suffer more damage. His name is on the ballot for the 2027 election, and a running battle with Obasanjo is not the kind of campaign strategy any serious candidate would welcome. Obasanjo is not running for anything, so he has little to lose. Atiku is. And when your opponent is a man who knows where many of your bodies are buried, you do not pick a fight with him. Not if you are wise.
Which brings us back to Keyamo and Obi. The airport incident was, by any reasonable measure, a minor affair. On July 30, the minister appeared on Channels Television’s Politics Today and delivered a line that has since taken on a life of its own.
The question that prompted Keyamo’s response did not sit well with him. The host, Seun Okinbaloye, had asked whether the government’s handling of the incident at the airport involving Peter Obi was not simply politics taken too far. Keyamo was not having any of it. He turned the question back on the interviewer, pointing out that Obi had recently sat for a lengthy interview on the same programme without anyone pressing him on the inconsistencies in his own account. That, for Keyamo, was the real issue. It was in that context—accusing Seun of bias and Obi of peddling a victimhood narrative without evidence—that Keyamo let loose with his now-famous line: Obi lies like a fish drinks water.
The imagery is striking. A fish does not drink water; it is surrounded by it, lives in it, and does not know a world outside it. To say a man lies like a fish drinks water is to say falsehood is not something he chooses to do; it is the very atmosphere he breathes, so natural and constant that he may not even know when he is doing it. Whether Keyamo was accurate in his assessment of Obi or not, he was able to establish a case against the 2027 presidential candidate.
It was in the same week that Obi made a declaration that turned heads. During an interview on Afia TV, he said that if he were President, he would have personally led the military into the Oriire forest to rescue the abducted pupils and teachers. “Is the bush not in Nigeria?” he asked. “Everybody in that bush will come out. Everybody. There might be casualties but everybody will come out.” He criticised President Tinubu for not calling Governor Seyi Makinde during the fifty-six days the victims were held captive. Then he declared: “If you want to lead, you should be ready to die.”
That is a fine statement for the cameras, the sort that gets people nodding in studios. But the question is what exactly he expected the President to do in that situation. The military operates on a clear chain of command, and the Commander-in-Chief does not personally dial governors to discuss tactical operations in the field. There are protocols for these things—the National Security Adviser, the Chief of Defence Staff, the theatre commanders. The government maintained its position against negotiating with the terrorists and opted instead for an alternative strategy, which ultimately yielded results and secured the release of the abductees.
The idea that a phone call from the President to a governor would have changed the outcome suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of how security operations are coordinated. It is easy to talk about dying when the closest you have come to danger is a clamped car at an airport, but the reality is that these operations are complex, involving intelligence, logistics, and the kind of on-ground coordination that cannot be reduced to a presidential phone call. Obi knows this, or should know this, but grand pronouncements have always been more of his style than the kind of detailed engagement that actually solves problems.
Through it all, President Tinubu has remained remarkably restrained. He has announced the expansion of the army from eight to twelve divisions, and he has spoken about the need for adequate guardrails should state police become a reality. He has also made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that his administration will not negotiate with criminals. Yet for all his pronouncements on security and governance, he has chosen not to engage with Peter Obi’s criticisms, nor has he been drawn into the public spat between Obasanjo and Atiku. Instead, he has simply carried on with his business, leaving others to fight among themselves while he attends to the matters he considers priorities. Some may call this caution; others may see it as calculation. Watching him from a distance, one cannot help but wonder if he has simply looked at the spectacle unfolding around him, shaken his head, and concluded that he has more pressing concerns than the theatrics of parked cars and grocery bills. Whatever his reasoning, he has stayed above the fray.
And one thing about Nigerian politics is that it does not give you time to breathe. Just when you are still processing what Obasanjo said about Atiku, Keyamo is calling Obi a liar on live television. Just when you are done shaking your head at that, Obi is telling you he is ready to die in the bush. Before you can even catch your breath, Cardinal John Onaiyekan has gone on Arise Television and told the country that Nigerian bishops presented a true picture of a bleeding nation to President Tinubu, only for the President to tell them plainly that he did not agree.
That interview, and the controversy it has stirred, may well consume the weeks before campaigns officially begin on 19 August. The presidency has already responded, accusing Onaiyekan of abusing clerical privilege by revealing what should have remained a private conversation. For his part, Onaiyekan has stood his ground, insisting that the bishops’ intervention was borne out of pastoral concern for a nation in distress, not political calculation. What makes this episode particularly striking is that it follows a familiar pattern: the government invites religious leaders for a dialogue, listens to their concerns, and then dismisses them publicly as either misinformed or acting in bad faith. The bishops, however, are not politicians, and they do not have the same appetite for the kind of theatrical exchanges we have witnessed between Obasanjo and Atiku, or between Keyamo and Obi. They are speaking to something deeper: the genuine despair of a people who feel abandoned by their leaders. That is a conversation that cannot be dismissed with a soundbite or a well-rehearsed line.
It is exhausting. It is entertaining. And if you are not careful, it will make you forget that real people are struggling to eat, to find work, to send their children to school, to simply survive another day in this country.
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