Soludo Tells Ndigbo to Stop Living Inside a 56-Year-Old War

In mid-January 2026, Governor Chukwuma Soludo used two public platforms — including an ARISE News appearance and a ThisDay report of 22 January — to say something many families already argue over at Christmas: the war ended in 1970. The politics of 2026 cannot be administered from 1967.

What he actually said

Soludo urged Ndigbo to “fully reintegrate” into Nigeria. He rejected secession as a serious programme. He told South-East youths to stop what he called self-marginalisation — the habit of sitting out national contests and then reading every outcome as proof of exclusion. He also said the criminals terrorising parts of the East were not a visiting ethnicity. They were, he argued, local.

Those sentences split living rooms. Supporters heard a governor trying to take his people off a treadmill of grievance. Critics heard a man sanitising a federation that has, in fact, under-invested in the East’s rail, ports, and security.

The argument this paper will not dodge

Both things can be true at once. The civil war is a real wound. It is also a poor operating system for a trading people who already run shops from Aba to Atlanta. A 56-year-old war cannot pave the Onitsha–Enugu road. It cannot keep a school open on a Monday.

Soludo does not own this argument. Town unions, Ohanaeze, churches, and the diaspora will keep it. The useful question is not whether the governor is loyal enough. It is whether the East intends to win inside the country it already feeds.