Between Servitude and Freedom: Why Truth Telling Terrifies Political Power in Abia
There is a dangerous confusion spreading across the political space in Abia State: the deliberate attempt to blur the line between service and servitude, between loyalty and slavery, between citizenship and submission. This confusion is not accidental. It is manufactured, cultivated, and sustained by political actors who thrive not on truth, performance, or accountability, but on deception, emotional manipulation, and intellectual dependency.
History shows that every society that abandons truth telling in favour of sycophancy ultimately collapses into mediocrity. Abia is not immune.
For decades, political narratives in the state have been dominated by what can only be described as Orwellian double speak—a system where failure is marketed as success, incompetence rebranded as experience, and public looting disguised as “political structure.” Those who perfected this craft governed Abia for nearly a quarter of a century, leaving behind weak institutions, broken trust, and a population conditioned to clap for their own neglect.
Today, many of these same actors are resurfacing, regrouping, and repackaging themselves as saviours. Their strategy is predictable: rewrite history, weaponise ethnicity and sentiment, recruit praise singers, and attack truth tellers. What they fear most is not opposition—it is independent thinking.
Truth tellers are dangerous to political fraud because truth exposes patterns. It reveals continuity between past failure and present ambition. It unmasks the recycled rhetoric of “unity” that is often nothing more than an alliance of convenience among those seeking a return to relevance. Every so-called “unification of opposites” built on unresolved accountability is doomed to fail. You cannot reconcile theft with transparency, nor can you merge progress with regression and expect development.
This is where the distinction between servants and slaves becomes critical. A servant retains agency, judgment, and conscience. A slave surrenders all three. When citizens defend obvious failures, excuse corruption, and attack those who ask questions, they are no longer participating in democracy—they are enabling domination. That is the precise moment when praise becomes chains.
Political leaders who despise truth telling often surround themselves with individuals who mistake access for influence and proximity for power. Such people amplify falsehoods, rationalise errors, and present weaknesses as strengths. In doing so, they help leaders lose touch with reality. This is how governments fail while convinced of their own excellence.
Abia does not need more emotional mobilisation. It needs voter independence—citizens who think freely, evaluate records critically, and refuse to outsource their judgment to political patrons. Democracy does not thrive on blind loyalty; it thrives on informed dissent. The health of any political system can be measured by how it treats its truth tellers.
Those who label critics as enemies, troublemakers, or “ungrateful” are often revealing their deepest insecurity: fear of exposure. They know that once citizens begin to connect past actions with present claims, the illusion collapses. Hence the anger, the insults, the crude attacks, and the desperate attempts to silence dissenting voices.
But history is clear: societies advance when citizens insist on truth, not when they surrender to manipulation. Political power that cannot withstand scrutiny does not deserve permanence. Leaders who fear questions are unfit to lead. And citizens who refuse to think independently mortgage their future.
Abia stands at a critical moment—not just politically, but morally. The choice is stark: remain trapped in recycled falsehoods or embrace a culture of truth, accountability, and independent citizenship. One path leads back to stagnation; the other opens the door to renewal.
Truth telling is not treason.
Independent thinking is not rebellion.
And citizenship is not slavery.
The future belongs to those who understand the difference.
AProf Chukwuemeka Ifegwu Eke
