THE PANIC OF FAILED PROPAGANDISTS: HOW DESPERATE POLITICAL MERCENARIES ARE WAGING A DIRTY SMEAR WAR AGAINST DR. IKEDI OHAKIM
By Anthony Okoro, Concerned Imo Citizen and Governance Advocate
The political underworld in Imo State has once again unleashed its familiar army of rented voices, professional blackmailers, and keyboard propagandists. Whenever the name of Dr Ohakim begins to dominate public discourse, these merchants of falsehood suddenly crawl out from obscurity in coordinated panic, armed with recycled lies, emotional manipulation, and tired propaganda they have been peddling for years.
Ordinarily, the latest outburst from Nze Chidi Okoroafor would not deserve a response. Political noise-makers of his category survive on attention and manufactured outrage. But when distortion is deliberately weaponized to rewrite history and deceive younger generations, silence becomes irresponsible. Falsehood must be confronted directly, dismantled publicly, and buried permanently beneath facts and memory.
The article in question is not intellectual criticism. It is a sponsored political hit piece soaked in bitterness, fear, and desperation. Beneath all the dramatic language and theatrical insults lies one uncomfortable truth: the growing resurgence of Dr. Ohakim is deeply frightening to certain political interests who believed they had erased him permanently from Imo’s political consciousness.
If Ohakim were truly irrelevant, nobody would be investing this much energy, venom, and coordination attacking him.
Politically dead men do not provoke sleepless nights.
They do not trigger emergency propaganda campaigns.
They do not inspire this level of elite anxiety.
The obsession itself is the evidence of relevance.
The real fear among these political actors is not merely Ohakim as an individual; it is the dangerous return of comparison. Imolites are once again comparing administrations, revisiting governance records, and asking difficult questions about where the state was, where it is today, and where it could have been. That process of public reflection is collapsing years of carefully constructed propaganda.
For years, political opportunists sold emotional narratives to the public while hoping citizens would forget the physical realities they experienced under Ohakim’s administration. But memory is stubborn. Roads that were constructed cannot be erased with newspaper insults. Institutional reforms cannot be deleted by propaganda columns. Urban renewal programmes cannot be wished away by political bitterness.
The dishonest attempt to portray the 2011 election as some flawless democratic verdict is one of the greatest insults to political intelligence. Large sections of Imo people still believe that election was shaped by manipulation, betrayal, elite conspiracy, and coordinated political interests determined to remove Ohakim at all costs. The same entrenched networks that benefited from that controversial outcome are now terrified that public sentiment may be shifting.
And indeed, it is shifting.
Many Imolites who once celebrated his removal are openly expressing disappointment with the years that followed. The growing nostalgia surrounding Ohakim’s administration is not a manufactured illusion; it is the consequence of comparison between structured governance and years of political instability, inconsistency, and diminished ambition.
Describing the “Bring Back Ohakim” movement as “political necromancy” only exposes the intellectual emptiness of its critics. Citizens have every democratic right to support a former governor whose developmental footprints remain visible across the state years after leaving office.
Under Ohakim’s leadership, Owerri gained national recognition for environmental cleanliness through the famous Clean and Green initiative. Major road infrastructure projects transformed mobility across the state. Youth empowerment schemes, civil service reforms, and long-term economic initiatives introduced a level of strategic planning many still remember today.
Beyond physical infrastructure, his administration established enduring institutions such as the (ISOPADEC), (IROMA), and (ENTRACO). These agencies were not imaginary inventions or propaganda slogans; they were structured governance mechanisms designed to address development, transportation, and infrastructure maintenance.
Ironically, many of the individuals insulting those legacies today have never built anything remotely comparable themselves.
The repeated question, “What did Ohakim leave behind?” therefore collapses immediately under the weight of facts. He left measurable governance structures, developmental benchmarks, environmental reforms, institutional frameworks, and visible infrastructure that remained reference points long after his departure from office.
Even critics who dislike him politically often struggle privately to deny the scale of ambition his government represented.
What the anti-Ohakim propagandists truly fear is that public memory is beginning to overpower propaganda.
The accusation of authoritarianism is equally selective and dishonest. Political disagreements between governors and state assemblies are not unique to Ohakim; they are recurring features of Nigeria’s political environment. Yet propagandists deliberately isolate his administration while remaining silent about far more serious abuses elsewhere.
What they also refuse to acknowledge is that Ohakim governed under the relatively smaller (PPA) while maintaining a functional working relationship with a legislature overwhelmingly controlled by the (PDP). Under the leadership of then Speaker , the state witnessed political cooperation that contradicts the dictatorship narrative these propagandists desperately push today.
The allegations of media intolerance belong to the same tired propaganda warehouse that has been recycled endlessly without credible legal validation. During that era, sections of the media became active participants in political warfare, blackmail operations, and coordinated smear campaigns sponsored by desperate political actors.
Despite all the noise, accusations, headlines, and emotional manipulation, no court ever convicted Dr. Ohakim of dictatorship, abuse of office, or authoritarian misconduct because there was never sufficient legal substance behind the propaganda.
The strategy was always political assassination through repetition: repeat allegations endlessly and hope perception eventually replaces evidence.
But repetition does not transform fiction into fact.
The attempt to blame Ohakim for the later deterioration of is another example of dishonest political revisionism. Owerri could not have emerged repeatedly as one of Nigeria’s cleanest and most attractive urban destinations during his tenure if the infrastructure environment had truly collapsed as critics now dishonestly suggest.
At the time, Concorde Hotel remained one of the most patronized hospitality facilities for conferences, retreats, and business events. To now attribute years of subsequent neglect and deterioration solely to Ohakim’s administration is intellectually weak and historically unserious.
Infrastructure decay in Nigeria is cumulative. Multiple administrations contribute either to maintenance or neglect. Attempting to isolate one government while ignoring those that followed exposes the political motives behind the accusation.
Even the constant mockery of sanitation programmes reveals how shallow many of these critics truly are. Environmental management is not comedy; it is a serious component of urban governance. The Clean and Green initiative improved public sanitation standards and transformed the image of Owerri nationally. The fact that critics still mock those achievements only shows their inability to confront the programme’s visible success.
The repeated recycling of the Reverend Father controversy further demonstrates the intellectual exhaustion of the anti-Ohakim propaganda industry. Many aspects of that controversy evolved over time, with clarifications, recantations, and apologies emerging from key actors, including . Yet political propagandists continue resurrecting the story because outrage remains their only surviving political weapon.
When critics cannot defeat governance records, they manufacture emotional distractions.
When they cannot erase achievements, they recycle scandals.
When they cannot stop political momentum organically, they deploy propaganda mercenaries.
That is precisely what is happening now.
The truth is simple: the growing strength of the Bring Back Ohakim movement has unsettled entrenched political interests who fear a return to governance defined by structure, discipline, strategic planning, and developmental ambition.
What frightens them most is not nostalgia.
It is comparison.
And once citizens begin comparing records honestly, propaganda becomes increasingly powerless.
Ultimately, newspaper attacks, anonymous articles, and sponsored media hysteria will not determine Imo State’s political future. The final judgment will come from the people themselves — citizens who can compare administrations using their lived experiences rather than propaganda scripts.
History has never been kind to political propagandists.
And when the dust finally settles, it will not remember the hired attackers, anonymous writers, or desperate sponsors screaming from the shadows.
It will remember the record.
