by Mohammed Bello Doka
4 May, 2026.
On May 3, 2026, a political earthquake rumbled through Abuja. Before the cameras and the chants of “O-K is okay,” Peter Obi and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso stood shoulder to shoulder—a former Anambra governor in an all-black kaftan beside a former Kano governor in a white babanriga and signature Kwankwasiyya cap—as they formally joined the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC). The scene was choreographed for unity. But beneath the handshake and the smiles lies a question more unsettling than any election result: Is this alliance a betrayal of everything Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB have bled for, or is it Nigeria’s most audacious deception?
The Deception Coded in a Handshake
The political marriage between Obi and Kwankwaso carries all the hallmarks of what Buba Galadima, a close Kwankwaso ally, once called the “intrigues of election 2027.” Why would Kwankwaso, a Fulani Muslim who governed Kano State under a Sharia penal code—and who was recently reportedly targeted for sanctions by the United States Congress for his alleged role in promulgating Sharia law—be the ideal partner for a man whose entire political base sits in the Christian-majority South-East and South-South? The contradictions are not accidental. They are strategic.
But strategic for whom? While Obi and Kwankwaso sing of a “united Nigeria,” the architect of the Biafran struggle remains in detention. IPOB has drawn a clear line in the sand. In a blistering 2025 statement, IPOB spokesman Emma Powerful declared: "Peter Obi is not an IPOB member, and never supported our agitation for freedom at any time because he pursues a totally different goal." More damningly, the group accused Kwankwaso—of all people—of having a “born to rule mentality” because he is Fulani, and of being unwilling to “play second fiddle to a Southern Christian presidential candidate.” IPOB, in other words, has rejected not just the alliance but the very premise of Nigerian politics. Yet Obi proceeds as if he never heard them.
A Fulani Running Mate for a “Religious War”?
This is where the mask slips. In the heat of the 2023 elections, Peter Obi was caught in a firestorm over a leaked audio in which he was alleged to have described the presidential election as a “religious war.” He denied it. He called the recording fake. But the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, has spoken at Chatham House and elsewhere about agitations and sit-at-home orders without ever once unequivocally condemning the killings carried out by IPOB and its armed wing, the Eastern Security Network (ESN). Indeed, as late as 2023, a civic group, the National Peace Movement, accused Obi of “blatant refusal to condemn the atrocious activities of the terrorists,” calling it a “subtle endorsement” of their violence. He maintained: “I condemned all agitators.”
The body of evidence is overwhelming: the same Peter Obi who has never called for the ESN to be disarmed is now draping a Fulani running mate in the fabric of southern liberation. Is this a strategic deception? It appears so. The alliance allows Obi to claim he is building a pan-Nigerian coalition while his base in the South-East continues to watch, in silence, as IPOB militants enforce sit-at-home orders and issue ultimatums to Fulani herders. Kwankwaso, meanwhile, gains a pathway to power in 2027 and possibly the presidency in 2031—if a rumored “one-term” concession for Obi is any indication.
The Use-and-Dump Blueprint
Here is the crux of the deception: Obi’s strategy might not be a genuine national unification project at all. It could be a classic use-and-dump scheme. The Igbo political elite have long complained of marginalization. If Obi secures the presidency through a Fulani alliance, he will owe his victory not to the bullet but to the ballot—and to the northern establishment he once railed against. Once in power, what stops him from discarding Kwankwaso and the Fulani political class? In Nigerian politics, alliances of convenience are rarely alliances of loyalty. The same man who jumped from APGA to PDP to Labour Party to ADC to NDC in a decade is now the same man asking the North to trust him.
And if the plan fails? Obi retains plausible deniability: he can claim he tried to build a national consensus, while IPOB continues its campaign in the forests and creeks of the South-East. The Fulani, in this calculus, become the expendable pawn in a game of regional chess.
The Final Question: Is Kwankwaso Trapped?
If the alliance is a strategic deception, then Kwankwaso may be the most deceived of all. He has entered a pact with a political movement that has, for years, refused to condemn the very militants who target his ethnic kin. He has joined hands with a man whose supporters have cheered the expulsion of Fulani herders from Igboland. And he has done so at the moment when IPOB’s official stance is that “if there is a region to avoid due to criminality with Terrorism, it is Northern Nigeria.”
Whether Kwankwaso recognizes the trap or simply chooses to walk into it for the promise of power is irrelevant. The question for Nigeria is stark: if Peter Obi cannot convince his own backyard to stop the killing of Fulani civilians, how will he convince the nation to trust him with a Fulani by his side?
The alliance may be strategic. But it is also a deception—one whose final act has yet to be written.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
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