Obidients are very much divided about supporting GRV or Doherty. So I ran a poll thinking it would be 50/50 or at worst 60/40 although I wasn't particularly sure which of them would have the upper hand. So I ran a poll to give me an idea. The end result shows an overwhelming support for Doherty. Obidients like GRV, but they hate that he is associated with Atiku. Maybe it can change, in politics 24 hours is a lifetime. GRV will have a lot of work to do in navigating the next few months if he wants Obidients to support him.

There is a part of Nigeria’s history that becomes very interesting when you look at the map before and after the Civil War. Today, we talk about the South-East and South-South as though these have always been two completely separate geographical worlds. They haven't. Before the Civil War, the Eastern Region was a much larger political territory. It stretched from what is now the South-East into areas that today sit in Rivers, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom and Cross River. Then, in 1967, something happened. General Yakubu Gowon abolished Nigeria's four regions and created 12 states. One of them was Rivers State. And this wasn't an insignificant boundary adjustment. Rivers State took territory from the old Eastern Region, including Port Harcourt. Human Rights Watch later described the creation of Rivers State as cutting the Igbo heartland off from direct access to the sea and transferring control of Port Harcourt, then an increasingly important oil and commercial centre, to a new state government. The consequence was enormous. The old Eastern Region had been broken apart. Then came the Civil War. Biafra lost. And Nigeria continued creating more states. Akwa Ibom was created from Cross River in 1987. Bayelsa was carved out of Rivers in 1996. By then, the old Eastern Region had been fragmented into several states belonging to different political and administrative identities. Then came another interesting development. The six geopolitical zones. The six-zone idea emerged during the constitutional reform debates of the 1990s. South-East: Abia Anambra Ebonyi Enugu Imo South-South: Akwa Ibom Bayelsa Cross River Delta Edo Rivers The result was that several territories and communities with deep historical, linguistic and cultural connections to the Igbo world were now administratively outside the South-East. And this is where another fascinating part of the story begins. Identity. Take the Ikwerre. For decades, historians and anthropologists have debated the relationship between the Ikwerre and the wider Igbo world. One academic review notes that Ikwerre history was historically “subsumed as a pan-Igbo nation,” while later scholarship increasingly examined Ikwerre history as a distinct ethnic identity. Another academic study notes that the Ikwerre were, until relatively recently, often regarded as an offshoot of the Igbo ethnic group. And the debate isn't confined to Ikwerre. Ogba communities in Rivers are described in the Journal of African History as an Igbo-speaking group located in what is now Rivers State. Some scholarship also records communities around Port Harcourt, including Rebisi, Ikwerre, Ogba, Ekpeye, Omoku, Etche, Oyigbo and others, as having historically identified with the Igbo world before later identity politics altered how some communities described themselves. And over generations, political boundaries can become cultural boundaries. Children grow up in a different state. They learn a different political history. Their politicians mobilise around a different identity. Their institutions use a different administrative classification. Their neighbours become different. And eventually, what was once a relatively fluid identity can become something much more rigid. That is one of the most fascinating things about Nigeria. Our map did not merely reflect our identities. In many places, the map helped create them.