It could have begun any other way, but no; it was with a football metaphor. Peter Obi, ever the careful wordsmith, called himself a Champions League player and placed Anambra’s governor, Charles Soludo, somewhere in the juniors. Soludo shot back: Obi was a “clubless” wanderer, a politician without a team or trophy.
The sparring followed Anambra’s 2025 governorship election, a race Obi did not contest but could not ignore. Soludo had just secured a second term and was celebrating when the old rivalry resurfaced. Cameras caught Obi urging the governor to “concentrate on working for the people.” Soludo replied with an economist’s precision and a boxer’s flourish.
Their exchanges have history. In 2022, Soludo dismissed Obi’s presidential run as “going nowhere,” prompting a torrent of online backlash. That feud cooled when politics demanded restraint. But in Anambra, where politics is theatre, rivalries never die but only hibernate.
The irony is that both men share more than they admit.
Each governed the same state. Each prides himself on reform and frugality. Each sees himself as the better model for Nigeria’s rebirth. Soludo lectures with the calm of a Cambridge scholar; Obi campaigns with the fervour of a street preacher. Both believe the other misunderstands the game.
Analysts say their clash is philosophical. Soludo speaks of macroeconomics and banking reform; Obi speaks of savings and schools. One dreams in graphs, the other in spreadsheets. Their disagreement mirrors Nigeria’s own divide between technocratic vision and populist pragmatism.
To some, the bickering is comic relief from grim headlines. To others, it reveals the delicateness of Anambra’s political elite, where ego time and again outpaces achievement. Still, it keeps both men in the public eye: one inside Government House, the other pacing the national stage, waiting for another whistle to blow.
In the end, critics would have us believe that Anambra may need both kinds of wisdom: the economist’s theory and the trader’s instinct. But for now, the pitch remains noisy, and the match, as Soludo might say, has only entered the first half.
