By Sam Esiaba
There comes a moment in public life when desperation sheds its disguise, not through courage, conviction, or strength, but through the instruments of intimidation, manipulation, and coercion. Across politics and society, there are men who mistake blackmail for strategy, propaganda for influence, and noise for power.
They manufacture falsehoods, weaponize relationships, and trade deception like merchants of chaos, hoping fear will achieve what credibility cannot.
But blackmail has limits. Lies, no matter how carefully tailored, eventually collide with truth. Deception, no matter how loudly amplified, struggles to survive beneath the crushing weight of facts, consistency, and character.
A notorious blackmailer thrives where silence reigns, where people fear speaking, fear resisting, or fear temporary embarrassment. He mistakes patience for weakness, restraint for surrender, and dignity for defeat. He believes volume can replace substance and intimidation can substitute for principle.
Yet history, that stubborn recorder of human folly, repeatedly teaches one lesson: those who build influence on intimidation eventually collapse beneath the weight of their own methods.
Dr. Kelechi Anosike was a late entrant into the race for the PDP governorship ticket. But while some earlier aspirants were waiting for endorsements from above and hoping to emerge as consensus candidates through political entitlement, Dr. Anosike chose the harder path, the path of political work, consultation, and grassroots engagement.
Rather than waiting for an automatic endorsement as sole aspirant, Dr. Anosike went to the streets. He traversed the 17 local government areas of Abia State, consulting party leaders, stakeholders, delegates, and grassroots members. He met openly with the State Working Committee (SWC) and formally declared his intention before the party leadership, just as Barr. Olugu Kalu Ugba (Isibumba) did.
For the avoidance of doubt, Chief John Okiyi Kalu (JOK) was the only aspirant who could not summon the courage to formally declare his ambition before the state party leadership.
On the day scheduled for his meeting with the SWC, he reportedly told party leaders he merely came to have breakfast with them and would return another day to discuss his governorship ambition. Unfortunately, he never returned.
It is on record that JOK was so careless about his ambition that he neither came personally to pick up nor submit his nomination form. Instead, he asked someone to deliver the form to him in Abuja and later arranged for another person to travel from Abuja to Umuahia to submit it on his behalf.
He obviously approached the entire process with levity and a sense of entitlement. No serious political contender would risk delegating such a critical aspect of his ambition, especially the collection and submission of nomination forms, to others.
Anosike worked tirelessly for his emergence. He moved from one end of Abia to another, meeting PDP leaders and members across the state. He held repeated consultations with LGA party chairmen and appealed directly for their support. He did not sit back waiting for political godfathers to hand him victory on a platter. He earned his mandate through hard work, strategic engagement, humility, capacity, and visible commitment to the party structure.
While others relied heavily on media noise, entitlement mentality, and expectations of automatic endorsement based on perceived past records, Anosike invested in the real currency of politics: relationships, structure, consultations, and grassroots mobilisation. That was why the party leadership and members found him worthy and capable of carrying the PDP flag.
The overwhelming votes he received did not happen by accident; they were the product of deliberate political labour.
Only Anosike held an expanded stakeholders meeting in Abia South comprising all LGA executives, ward executives, zonal leaders, totaling over 250 persons, at the Obingwa LGA Hall.
As at Friday, 22nd May, when he met them, they openly told him that no other aspirant had engaged them at that level. These are delegates and major stakeholders.
On Saturday, 23rd May, he met stakeholders from Abia North. Same story. Anosike did not come to play. He came prepared.
In politics, no margin of defeat is ever wide enough to comfort the loser. Whether the gap is ten votes or ten million, defeat rarely arrives with acceptance. The first instinct of many political losers is not reflection, but resistance; not introspection, but accusation. That is why losers almost always cry foul.
Across political history, victory is celebrated as the voice of the people, while defeat is often interpreted as conspiracy, manipulation, betrayal, or sabotage. Very few politicians publicly admit they were outworked, outsmarted, out-organized, or simply rejected by the electorate.
Instead, the blame game begins almost immediately: the process was flawed, the system was compromised, allies were disloyal, or opponents were unfairly advantaged.
More so, it became obvious that some of the losers never truly prepared for victory. They were either waiting for victory to be handed to them based on the illusion of past records or operating with the entitlement mentality of, “I have paid my dues.”
The paradox of democratic politics is that everyone enters the contest proclaiming faith in the process, but not everyone is prepared to respect the outcome when it goes against them.
The bitterness of defeat is often amplified by ambition, investment, ego, and expectation. Those who spend years building structures, mobilizing supporters, and nurturing personal dreams do not surrender easily to political reality.
For many, accepting defeat feels like accepting irrelevance. And so, allegations become emotional refuge for wounded ambition.
Politicians who rely heavily on propaganda often end up as sore losers. They construct illusions of popularity, manufacture false momentum, weaponize blackmail, and deploy threats in the mistaken belief that intimidation can substitute for genuine grassroots acceptance. In their echo chambers, propaganda becomes reality, and applause from hired loyalists is mistaken for public endorsement.
Social media may create visibility during an electoral contest, but elections are not won on social media. Noise is not the same as structure. Online popularity is not always electoral strength. Political contests are won through organisation, strategy, credibility, party loyalty, grassroots engagement, and the ability to build trust beyond digital applause.
Most politicians make the fatal mistake of confusing media dominance with political dominance. They trend online but collapse at the ballot. They intimidate critics, sponsor narratives, and attack opponents, believing perception alone can deliver victory. But when the results emerge contrary to their expectations, they resort to the familiar rhetoric of the defeated: allegations, excuses, conspiracy theories, and endless claims of manipulation.
The truth remains that when politicians fail to prepare for victory through genuine political work, they unconsciously prepare themselves for defeat. Politics is not sustained by noise, arrogance, emotional blackmail, or entitlement. It is sustained by structure, relationships, sacrifice, consistency, and the confidence of the people.
Elections and political contests are not judged by the emotions of the defeated, but by the credibility of the process and the verdict of the majority. If every loser becomes the sole judge of fairness, then no election anywhere would ever be legitimate.
In truth, political maturity is not measured only by how leaders celebrate victory, but also by how they manage defeat. Democracy survives not because winners rejoice, but because losers eventually accept that power cannot always rotate in their favour.
No margin of defeat will ever put a smile on the face of a loser. That is the nature of politics. But statesmanship begins where bitterness ends.
Esiaba, a PDP member and public affairs analyst,contributed this piece from Umuahia
