Akeredolu Isn’t Sitting This One Out
Just when you thought Nigerian politics had exhausted its surprises, Betty Anyanwu-Akeredolu, the outspoken former First Lady of Ondo State, has taken off her gloves and picked a side. And no, it’s not the one her party might’ve expected.
In a post laced with conviction and a dash of Lee Kuan Yew nostalgia, Akeredolu declared her support for Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s perennial reformer and self-styled apostle of frugality. “I believe you @PeterObi,” she wrote on X, embracing his pledge to serve only one term if elected in 2027. For her, that’s all the time a purposeful leader needs to lay the kind of institutional foundation that Singapore built. And Nigeria, she implies, so desperately lacks.
It’s more than just a retweet-and-rant moment. Coming from the widow of late Governor Rotimi Akeredolu, a staunch figure in the APC, Betty’s endorsement lands with symbolic heft. It signals what some observers are calling a moral realignment among the elite, a murmuring shift toward Obi’s minimalist governance ethos. Her words? Obi is “principled and frugal,” a sharp foil to the “entrenched corruption” she says is throttling the country’s potential.
But Betty’s rebellion doesn’t stop at the federal level. Back home in Ondo, she’s been lighting metaphorical matches under Governor Lucky Aryasatya’s desk, calling his leadership “rudderless” and openly questioning his reappointment of a finance commissioner previously ousted during her late husband’s administration. “You can connect the dots,” she said ominously.
Critics are quick to paint her as politically opportunistic. After all, she’s still eyeing a senatorial seat. But that hasn’t stopped her from skewering what she calls the “noisy prayers” that failed her late husband or denouncing President Tinubu’s Nigeria as a place where “only those benefiting” pretend all is well.
In a season of studied silences and strategic amnesia, Betty is choosing her words carefully, but also very, very loudly.
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