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While a number of leading politicians in the Southeast and a huge percentage of party supporters in the same region have remained fixated on old political orthodoxy, a few governors are gently but firmly breaking out of the cocoon to carve a national niche and circle of influence for themselves. These few governors and a minister – Peter Mbah of Enugu State, Hope Uzodinma of Imo State, Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra State, and David Umahi of Ebonyi State – have realised that they must calibrate their regional appeal vis-à-vis their national influence to stand any chance of making a mark at the national level in the years ahead. They have seemed to realise how counterproductive the regional appeal subscribed to by Peter Obi, a former Anambra governor and Labour Party presidential candidate in the 2023 election, could be.

Leadership paradigm is shifting in the Southeast. A new generation of leaders is emerging in the region, and it eschews the needless antagonisms and opportunisms of the past. It recognises that despite being somewhat viewed with suspicion, that new paradigm involves an uncanny appreciation of how the power pendulum is swinging at the national level and which alliances they must associate with in order to stand any chance of future political successes. In their private musings and public discussions and debates the three governors and a minister have understudied the Southwest and discovered that excessive regional appeal could countermand, if not entirely undermine, a significant national appeal. They appreciate the qualities displayed by Chief Obafemi Awolowo, but noted how dismally he performed when he sought higher national office. And they saw how MKO Abiola created a groundswell of national following that galvanised his politics and gave him the 1993 presidential election.

More crucially, the emerging national leaders from the Southeast also saw how President Bola Tinubu carved a national following and, despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles erected by powerful interests and top political leaders around the country, won the 2023 poll. They have learnt to ignore every other thing controversial about him, and have chosen to focus on his methods. They have seen that to make a mark, a Southeast politician must have the broadened view of a national player, unencumbered by ethnicity and religion, and the self-immolating parochialism of irredentists and religious fanatics. Equally important, they have seized the small opportunity of leadership positions at all levels to leave an indelible developmental mark on their states and ministry. While the Southwest is immersed in complacency and has not produced a stand-out leader in the states in recent years, the emerging Southeast leaders have imbued their efforts with a sense of urgency never seen before in their region.

While Mr Uzodinma’s first electoral victory as governor in 2019 was controversial and the second in 2024 spectacular and well-deserved, he has proved a great asset to the state, and has offered remarkable and liberal leadership to his state and the region instead of the stifling insularism hitherto popular among Southeast politicians. Educated at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, and Federal University of Technology, Owerri, the two-term senator (2011-2019) counsels the Southeast to change their political paradigm from the narrow-minded provincialism they have long embraced to the open and tolerant politics that will help them break free of the chokehold that has kept them marginalised and grumbling. He probably stumbled into the All Progressives Congress (APC) as a result of the discrimination he suffered in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on which platform he was a senator, but since his arrival in the APC he has deprecated the ethnic card and has played expansive and broad-minded politics, seeking new friends and networking with a deliberateness that indicates foresight.

Mr Uzodinma is 66. While he will continue to be relevant after his second term as governor, it is unlikely he still harbours any presidential ambition. He may have laid a solid political foundation for himself, but neither time nor geopolitics is on his side. On the other hand, Mr Umahi, an engineer and current Works minister harboured presidential dreams, and indeed showed interest in the 2022 APC presidential primary; but at 62, it is not clear whether time and geopolitics will be kind to him. Far in excess of what he had achieved as a governor, he has displayed brilliance and energy in his current assignment as a minister. Migrating to the APC in 2018 as a second term governor, he finished well and strong, installing a successor and leaving indelible developmental marks on Ebonyi State. Polemical and outspoken, he has also joined other emerging regional political leaders to warn about the countervailing factor of regional provincialism in presidential politics. He scorned Mr Obi’s efforts, describing the optimistic and naïve LP candidate’s presidential campaign in 2022 and 2023 as deeply flawed and doomed from the beginning.

Another emerging leader is the redoubtable Prof. Soludo, a first-class economist and academician who is unafraid of controversy or debate. He is up for reelection early next month; he is projected to win by a healthy margin. He showed interest early enough in politics, particularly in the governorship of his state. Had he won early, he would have stamped himself in the consciousness of Nigerians far earlier than he has done and much more effectively than during his governorship of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) between 2004 and 2009. A visiting scholar at some of the world’s most prestigious universities in the US and UK, the 65-year-old governor may have flowered politically a little too late despite his glittering resume. He has chalked up outstanding records as governor, and has wondered at the naivety of many south-easterners in the game of national politics. Like Messrs Uzodinma and Umahi, the eminent economist and All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) chieftain, has already taken his place in the Southeast pantheon. He will continue to be relevant locally and nationally.

At just 53, Enugu’s Mr Mbah has demonstrated he is not afraid to take risks. Critics in the Southeast may not understand why the lawyer and businessman took the fateful step of defecting to the APC, but he is showing the region his capability for perspective reasoning by foreswearing parochial politics in favour of national and liberal politics with a crossover appeal. He will still be within the presidential age range when power rotates to the South in 2039 when it would be much harder to deny the Southeast finally. At that time, an aspirant will not only need a great and powerful party platform, he must also show his connections, have a record of supporting others to get to the top or win national elections, and must possess the ideological rampart to back his ambition. Mr Mbah is both an achiever and an intuitive politician who has his heart in the right place. Though he only managed to win the Enugu governorship poll controversially, should elections be held today, he will win by a landslide. Such is the force of his vision and developmental strides that only few governors can match.

For the first time in generations, the Southeast is producing leaders who can fight for their place nationally, pound-for-pound. They are showing courage in disavowing the sterile and crippling political orthodoxies of the past, and are projecting strength and intellectual depth far beyond their region, and breaking glass ceilings of all kind. They seem to be confirming what many political analysts have always concluded: that there is no inherent distrust or hatred for the Southeast; that what the region needs are cosmopolitan politicians who have paid their dues by associating with and supporting other national politicians in order to merit other people’s support. Messrs Soludo, Umahi, Uzodinma, and Mbah will go far, very far. They are the powerful and reassuring face of the new Southeast politics, and will help shape the elections of 2027, 2031, and beyond.

When self-determination agitator Nnamdi Kanu sacked his lawyers during the trial court’s last sitting, he signaled his preference for legal histrionics rather than substance. He will go on to give Nigerians and the courts a horse dose of that medicine as he takes over his defence. Already he is assembling, at least theoretically, a cavalry of international and domestic witnesses certain to grind his trial either to a halt entirely or to a snail’s pace. Many of the witnesses in question loath him; but he believes he stands on excellent legal grounds to haul them before the Federal High Court, Abuja where he expects to put them through punishing cross-examinations disconcerting enough to make them stammer or implicate themselves. He will not have his wish, of course, but he will entertain everyone, including himself, snd animate the gullible.

In July 2024, this column had weighed in on Mr Kanu’s long-running trial saga by suggesting that it was time to discontinue his case, not because there were no grounds to lock him up for good, but because the trial had become disruptive and distracting. In addition, argued the writer, it was time to respect the Southeast elite who had, speaking as one man it seemed, importuned President Bola Tinubu to release their son to them, with the region’s political elite standing as guarantors. It seemed a fair campaign, suggested the writer, but cautioned that restraining the voluble agitator who thrived on chaos and noise would be difficult, if not impossible. If they could guarantee that they would rein him in, a prospect the writer doubted, it was time to discontinue his case and release him. Mr Kanu, the scarlet pimpernel, had been arrested in 2015 and charged in court, but fled in 2017 while on bail, and was renditioned in 2021 and charged again in January 2022.

In 2025, the case is still as far from resolution as it was when he was extraordinarily renditioned from Kenya to Nigeria. His co-agitator, the Southwest’s flamboyant and superstitious Sunday Adeyemo, alias Sunday Igboho, had since got his freedom, not from Nigeria, but from Benin Republic where he had fled, was tried, and eventually released. It turned out that the Beninese justice system is not as convoluted as Nigeria’s, nor Mr Igboho himself as dramatic, incendiary, tragic and flawed as Mr Kanu. As a matter of fact, where Mr Igboho spoke in terms of using supernatural powers to achieved self-determination, with a hint of violence if it came to it, Mr Kanu spoke of nothing else but threats and violence, following up his daily radio and video harangues with concrete steps that led to the formation of militia groups dedicated to the projection of unconstitutional power.

Seeing how Mr Kanu has theatrically stalled his case, treated his lawyers scornfully, and like activist Omoyele Sowore, carried himself with a pomposity even fascist Benito Mussolini never attempted, this writer now balks at Mr Kanu’s release or pardon, regardless of whatever strings are attached. He deserves a speedy trial, if his legal chicaneries will allow. Indeed, from all indications, he will get a fair trial, despite the allegations of bias levelled against the Nigerian justice system. And since he has sacked his lawyers, obviously by mutual consent in order to allow him leeway to indulge his dramatic and bombastic escapades, the ball will remain squarely in his court. However, the courts should not allow him in the driver’s seat, let alone acquiesce to his whimsical speed. It is important for the courts to be in unequivocal control of the substance of the case and the tempo of the trial. Mr Kanu has developed a habit of not just pomposity, he also suffers from delusions of grandeur and would love to seize control of proceedings should the judge be lax in any way. They should not let him.

Last week’s street agitation in support of Mr Kanu, promoted and executed by Mr Sowore using his foreign grants, is a meddlesome attempt to confuse, complicate and undermine the terrorism trial. The protests presumed, like many non-south easterners, that there was a regional consensus in favour of Mr Kanu’s release. There was none. And there is unlikely to be any. The violence Mr Kanu’s supporters, particularly the Eastern Security Network (ESN) and the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), left in their wake has shattered families, destroyed lives, and caused cataclysmic economic losses in the region such that nothing would please some south-easterners more than to see the agitator locked up for a long time. They may forego reparations, but they want their pound of flesh, with or without blood. In any case, what is paramount is that his enemies and his supporters have called for justice. Let the courts ensure that ultimately justice is served, no matter how much delayed.

The media have generally tended to line up behind Mr Kanu. It is hard to understand why. They may perhaps simply be pivoting from their deep animosity towards President Tinubu to supporting anything and anyone opposed to the president, anything to bring the president to heel. Whatever the case, no one who has reflected on the Kanu case will fail to appreciate that it goes far beyond what the president has done or not done. The Kanu affair is first a regional ploy, then a national security issue, and finally a personal and megalomaniacal drive by a man so enamoured of speaking and acting violence in ways that are mocking, confrontational and unfeeling. Whether the courts can find any mitigation for his words and methods, for instance judicially appraising the manner of his rendition from Kenya in June 2021 and his exculpation by a Nairobi court in June 2025, is entirely up to the judges and the evidence adduced before their lordships.