I did not expect the reaction.
That reaction says more about Nigeria today than anything I wrote.
Let me be clear.
I grew up in the presence of power.
My father, Chief Godfrey Kio JaJa Amachree QC, was not an ordinary man. As the most senior African diplomat at the United Nations, in charge of Trusteeships and deeply involved in the Congo, he had direct access to the highest levels of American political and business leadership.
During the civil war, General Yakubu Gowon entrusted him with a critical mission—to use those connections to secure American support for the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
He succeeded.
That effort was not abstract. It was personal. It connected my family to the core of Nigeria’s military and political leadership at the time, including members of the Supreme Military Council such as General Hassan Katsina.
This is history. Not fiction.
As a boy, I played polo. As a gesture of goodwill and respect, General Hassan Katsina took me under his wing in that world. He visited me at Eton College. We had a relationship grounded in real life, not imagination.
So when people say this is a lie, I have to ask—on what basis?
Ignorance? Or refusal to accept that a southerner can have deep, authentic ties with the northern establishment?
What I am seeing now is troubling.
A knee-jerk hostility. A readiness to attack rather than to verify. A widening division between North and South that I did not experience growing up in the 1960s and 1970s.
Nigeria feels more fractured now than it did during far more difficult times.
On Tinubu, I stated clearly: I do not have confirmed evidence of certain agreements with powerful northern interests. But I said it makes sense within the context of Nigerian political history.
We have precedent.
General Babangida took Nigeria into the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation without national consensus. Sharia law operates in parts of the North despite Nigeria being constitutionally secular. These are not opinions—they are documented facts.
So why is it “impossible” to consider that political bargains may include ideological or religious dimensions?
We must be honest with ourselves.
At the same time, let me say this clearly to my northern brothers:
Do not mistake honesty for hostility.
Do not mistake experience for fabrication.
And do not assume you can silence voices simply because they come from the South.
I am not anti-North. Far from it.
I have engaged, lived, and built relationships across Nigeria. I was not raised with bitterness. I was not raised with division. I was raised to understand power, responsibility, and history.
But respect must be mutual.
You cannot take from the Niger Delta—its oil, its wealth, its lifeblood—and respond with insults, denial, and arrogance.
That path is dangerous.
Nigeria belongs to all of us.
Not to the North.
Not to the South.
Not to any single group.
And certainly not to those who believe they can control the narrative by attacking those who speak.
I will continue to speak.
Because I am not an outsider to Nigerian history.
I am part of it.
