28/08/2026
YOU SHALL BE DEFEATED, AND NOT A SINGLE PERSON IN OWERRI SHALL DIE
OPEN LETTER TO CHIMA MATTHEW AMADI
BY COLLINS OPUROZOR
Candidate Amadi,
I watched your video with the women of Ngwoma community in Owerri North LGA. I listened carefully to every word. What I heard was more than campaign rhetoric. I heard a candidate revealing his attitude towards ordinary people, enterprise, political morality and democratic competition. That matters because you are not asking to represent yourself. You are asking to represent the people of Imo East Senatorial District (Owerri Zone). The people therefore have a right to examine not only your promises, but also your temperament, your judgment and the values behind your words. And what you said in that video raises questions that cannot be wished away.
First, you described private-school proprietors in Owerri as failed businessmen who simply hustle in three-bedroom apartments, and you spoke of chemist shops with the contempt reserved for something shameful, or even uncivilized. That is an unpardonably poor understanding of enterprise. Great institutions do not arrive fully formed. Harvard began in 1636 as a modest college. Yale emerged from a small collegiate institution. Stanford was founded in 1885. Pfizer began in 1849 as a small chemical business in Brooklyn. Johnson & Johnson started in 1886 with a modest operation producing medical products. Are they all not giants today? They became great because somebody was willing to begin, endure, reinvest and build. And political leadership underwrote the creation of an enabling environment. The three-bedroom school you ridicule may be the beginning of an institution. The chemist shop you despise may be the beginning of a business empire. Small is a stage, not a disgrace.
Your contempt is therefore particularly revealing because the people you mocked are precisely the people who every serious representative should encourage. They are teachers, pharmacists, traders, artisans and entrepreneurs putting their savings into ventures that provide livelihoods for families, jobs for youngsters, and services for communities. They may not have millions to invest, but they have something more fundamental: the courage to start. Instead of ridiculing them, a politician seeking a seat in the Senate should be asking how government can make credit cheaper, infrastructure better, taxation fairer and small businesses capable of becoming larger enterprises. Leadership should expand people's possibilities, enable them become better in their chosen paths, and not deride their circumstances.
And since you have chosen to measure other people's worth by what they have built, the same standard must now apply to you. Chima, what have you built? What institution, enterprise or enduring project bears your imprint? You now describe yourself as a lecturer abroad. Pray, Mr. Lecturer, tell us the name of the institution. Tell Owerri people what you teach there. Or, are you just a koromoto lecturer? A koromotite! Ahiazuwa!
More importantly, identify the opportunities your alleged international position has created for people from Imo East. How many scholarships? How many academic collaborations? How many exchanges? How many young people have benefited from the doors you claim to have access to? If there is a record, let it be seen. A foreign connection becomes meaningful when it creates opportunities at home; otherwise, it remains a line on a résumé. Nwoke shi eshi yo!
Then came the contradiction over money. You openly condemned the women for accepting money from politicians in the past, presenting the practice as morally wrong, and then gave those same women N5,000 each. That deserves to be called what it is: a glaring hypocrisy. If using money to influence voters is wrong, it does not become right because the money comes from your pocket. Political morality cannot be a weapon reserved against your opponents. Our people are intelligent enough to see through your deceit.
But the statement that is deeply troubling is your declaration that the 2027 election would be a matter of “life and death.” This is shocking! Chima, you have gone astray; you have exposed yourself and defined your mission, and we shall stand up united in righteousness against your agenda of blood. This is an election. You are seeking a seat in the Senate, not fighting a war. We shall pay neither with our skulls nor with our blood! Your opponents are fellow citizens. The voter who rejects you is exercising a constitutional right. The woman who supports another candidate is not an enemy. No, Chima. They must never die! Not a single hair must fall from any Owerri person because of your inordinate quest for power. Political leadership requires the discipline to disagree without turning disagreement into mortal confrontation. A candidate who speaks of an election in the language of war and death has a responsibility to reassess himself, because words from political leaders can have consequences far beyond the room in which they are spoken.
So let me tell you this, and I will be unequivocal about it. So long as our God is still on the throne, you are already defeated man. January 16, 2026 is our covenant date with God to settle your matter once and for all. You shall be disgraced completely, your vanity torn bare, and all the machinations of your heart brought to naught. You the arrogant one; the haughty one, who seeks to reap where he has not sown; you the merchant of fear and feaster upon panic; the darkness which you represent shall not prevail over this land. Your politics is not of God, and this spectre of death is not our portion. Those who seek death and speak its language shall not lead us. The people deserve politicians who make them feel safe, not politicians whose rhetoric leaves them wondering what violence might follow political defeat.
Chima, you also need to understand that political legitimacy cannot be manufactured overnight. You are a stranger in Owerri Zone. You cannot simply appear overnight like someone without a natural history, make grand claims, throw about some new Naira notes, ridicule the struggles ofpeople who have built from little, and expect the electorate to surrender its trust. No. If you have any record of service, present it. If you have built institutions, identify them. If you have changed lives, let the beneficiaries speak. The people are not required to be dazzled by unverifiable credentials; they are entitled to demand evidence of service. You know that you have got none. We need substance, not sound, never fury!
And to those who have sent you into this contest whilst erroneously believing that Owerri people can be frightened, divided or set against one another, let them hear this clearly: their mission has failed. We had seen you clearly before you arrived the scene. Owerri Zone is not anybody's battlefield. Our young people are not political ammunition. Our communities will not be sacrificed to another man's ambition. We have endured enough of the politics that leaves ordinary citizens to bear the consequences of decisions made by people who are nowhere near the danger. Whatever political calculations brought you here, they will not turn Owerri into a theatre of violence.
Go back to those who sent you, and tell them that Owerri Zone cannot be set on fire for anybody's political ambition. Their mission has failed. Our God neither sleeps nor slumbers. The election will come. The people will vote. The ballots will be counted. They will count. And when it is over, Owerri will still be standing strong. Not a single person shall die, to your eternal shame and to the glory of our sovereign God!
