By Achilleus-Chud Uchegbu
This is about how celebrations by Action Alliance (AA) and Action Peoples Party (APP) of Justice Obiora Egwuatu’s decision in the matter of the Orlu Senatorial ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) expose an external plot against Imo State’s progress. Their celebrations tell us that in the turbulent theatre of Nigerian politics, few spectacles match the absurdity of minor parties popping champagne over a court order that has little direct bearing on their own fortunes.
Here is why! The recent Federal High Court ruling in Abuja directing the Independent National Electoral Commission to remove Governor Hope Uzodimma’s name as the All Progressives Congress candidate for the Orlu Senatorial Zone (Imo West) and substitute that of former Governor Rochas Okorocha has triggered predictable reactions. What stands out as particularly comic, however, is the gleeful celebration by elements of the AA and the APP in Imo State. Their public jubilation is not the spontaneous joy of principled democrats but the involuntary confession of actors who understand that the order serves interests far larger than the internal APC primary dispute it purports to resolve. It is evidence that forces outside Imo State are determined to impose a political fait accompli on the state, interrupt its progressive trajectory under Uzodimma’s leadership, and replace organic development with externally scripted disruption.
Compounding the farce is Senator Sam Anyanwu’s concurrent call for Imo people to embrace the so-called Rainbow Coalition. That invitation does not advance justice, and it betrays the very purpose the court order is being made to serve. This is in spite of the fact that Imo people are witnesses to developments in neighbouring Rivers State where governance and development have been stalled since 2024 due to contestation for control of state resources between the promoter-in-chief of the coalition and the governor. That control has turned the once-vibrant Rivers State into a laughing stock, with a governor who has been bullied into submission such that he can no longer assert himself. Unlike Rivers’ people, the people of Imo State will not be foolish enough to follow the Rainbow and deliver their state into a political gulag whose gates are manned by external beings.
Let’s return to the court order which arose from a contested APC primary held on 18 May 2026. Official results declared Uzodimma the winner by an overwhelming margin. Okorocha challenged the outcome, and Justice Obiora Egwuatu ruled that Okorocha had actually secured the majority of lawful votes, ordered INEC to publish Okorocha’s name, and restrained Uzodimma from parading himself as the candidate. It is significant that APC structures in Imo have rejected the judgment and signalled an appeal. The legal process will continue to the Supreme Court. However, what requires no further litigation is the political meaning of the celebrations that followed. When parties with negligible electoral value in Orlu zone suddenly find reason for public merriment over an APC internal matter, the celebration itself becomes the evidence. Action Alliance and Action Peoples Party have not been contenders for the Imo West senatorial seat. Not even for the House of Representatives or the State Assembly. Their sudden enthusiasm therefore reveals that the court order is being received by them not as a technical correction of a primary result but as a strategic victory against the dominant political force presented by Uzodimma, which has delivered measurable progress in Imo.
Under Governor Uzodimma, Imo has pursued a consistent agenda of infrastructure renewal, improved security coordination, and administrative reforms that have restored a measure of predictability after years of turbulence. Roads have been dualised, urban centres given attention, and the state’s profile within the Southeast elevated through disciplined engagement with the federal centre. Sadly, progressive developments of this kind threaten those who thrive on perpetual crisis and those who prefer that Imo State remains a bargaining chip in larger national negotiations. An order that weakens the sitting governor’s political standing, even temporarily, creates space for external players to insert themselves into the mix and draw political capital. The laughter from AA and APP is therefore the sound of people who believe that the space has now opened. Their celebration is hilarious because it is so transparent and readable. They are not celebrating the purity of primary democracy but celebrating the prospect that the machinery of progressive governance in Imo State can be stalled long enough for outsiders to impose their preferred outcomes.
This is the classic pattern of external instrumentation. A judgment delivered far from Owerri, based on documents and affidavits whose authenticity remains contested by the party structures on the ground, is immediately weaponised by actors with no organic stake in Orlu zone’s welfare. The timing here is instructive. The order arrives in an atmosphere already charged by national conversations about coalitions and realignments ahead of 2027. It arrives after sustained efforts to portray the Imo State government as isolated. It arrives when the governor’s insistence on internal party discipline and rejection of externally driven “rainbow” experiments has become public. The sequence therefore suggests coordination rather than coincidence. Forces that cannot defeat Uzodimma at the ballot or through superior local organisation have discovered that the courtroom in Abuja can achieve what the streets of Orlu will not. The celebrations of AA and APP function as the public relations wing of that discovery. They broadcast the message that the order is not merely about two APC politicians but about creating a vacuum that outsiders can fill.
Into that vacuum steps Senator Anyanwu with his call for Imo people to back the Rainbow Coalition. That should be dead on arrival. The invitation is presented as progressive opposition politics. But in reality it betrays the purpose that the court order is being pressed to serve. If the order were truly about the integrity of party primaries and the rule of law, the appropriate response would be to allow the appellate process to run its course and to focus political energy on presenting superior policy alternatives to the electorate. Instead, Anyanwu’s call treats the judicial setback as an opportunity to accelerate an external political project. The Rainbow Coalition, whatever its rhetorical packaging, functions as a vehicle for interests that have consistently sought to dictate terms to Imo State rather than persuade its people. By linking the court outcome to a broader invitation to abandon the state’s current developmental path, Anyanwu converts a legal dispute into a political instrument of disruption. That conversion is the betrayal. The court order is thereby made to serve not justice within APC but the larger project of terminating Imo State’s progressive march and replacing it with a coalition whose primary loyalty lies outside the state. But unknown to Sen. Anyanwu, his political capital, whatever it is, has been deeply eroded by his open and total submission to the promoter of the Rainbow Coalition.
So, the hilarious quality of the AA and APP celebrations lies in their unintentional honesty. These parties understand that their own relevance depends on the weakening of the dominant progressive structure. They cannot win Orlu zone on their own merits, so they cheer any development that appears to diminish the man who has kept them marginal. Their joy is the joy of the bystander who benefits when the strong are momentarily distracted. It is also the joy of those who have been promised a role in the new arrangement once the external forces complete their work. In that sense, the celebrations are not comic relief but confirmatory evidence. When parties that ordinarily struggle for visibility suddenly find the resources and the platform to celebrate a High Court order concerning another party’s primary, the coordination is no longer hidden. The external hand becomes visible in the applause.
However, Imo State’s progressive development is not an abstract slogan. It is the concrete improvement in the daily experience of citizens who remember the insecurity and administrative paralysis of the Rochas Okorocha years. Any project that seeks to terminate that trajectory, whether through judicial surprise or through coalition invitations, must be named for what it is: an attempt to impose a political outcome that the people of Imo State have not chosen. The court order may yet be reviewed by higher courts. The celebrations of Action Alliance and Action Peoples Party, however, have already performed their function. They have revealed the larger design. Sen. Anyanwu’s call has performed a similar service by making explicit the political destination that the order is meant to facilitate. Together they create a single narrative of external forces seeking to create a vacuum in Imo State, minor political parties providing the applause track, and opposition figures attempting to convert a legal dispute into a mandate for regime change and submitting Imo State to destabilisation in the hands of a coalition for which Rivers State is a testimonial.
The people of Orlu zone and of Imo State more broadly are not obliged to accept this script. They can recognise the comedy in the celebrations without mistaking it for a verdict on their own future. They can insist that the integrity of internal party processes be determined by evidence and appellate review rather than by the volume of applause from parties that have never won their confidence. They can reject the invitation to trade hard-won stability for the uncertain promises of a rainbow that is being painted from outside the state. The people of Imo State understand quite well that progressive development is not terminated by a single court order, nor is it advanced by opportunistic celebrations. For them, it is sustained by the continued judgment of citizens who refuse to allow their state to become the playground of external ambitions. The hilarious celebrations of Action Alliance and Action Peoples Party have merely illuminated the ambition. The response belongs to the people of Imo State.