By: Williams Ike

There are men who speak because they have built something measurable. And there are men who speak because the microphone is available and the moment appears convenient. Pascal Okechukwu, better known as Cubana Chiefpriest, falls into the second category. In the aftermath of the President’s campaign flag-off, he rose to deliver a public verdict on Engr. David Umahi and every South-East minister. He described Umahi as the second-worst minister the region has ever produced. He demanded report cards. He accused them of enriching themselves and gathering land. He spoke as though he had earned the authority to grade public officers.

He has not. Let us place the two men side by side and examine what the record actually shows.

Engr. David Umahi is a trained civil engineer. He served as PDP State Chairman in Ebonyi State. He served as Deputy Governor for four years. He then served as Governor for eight full years. In those eight years he transformed one of Nigeria’s most underdeveloped states into a visible construction zone that even critics were forced to acknowledge. The record includes more than 1,500 kilometres of concrete roads, over twenty flyovers, the Chuba Okadigbo International Airport, the David Umahi University of Medical Sciences, the St. Margaret Umahi International Market, industrial clusters, and a programme of urban renewal that altered the physical appearance of Abakaliki and several other towns. After a brief period in the Senate he was appointed Minister of Works, becoming the first Igbo to hold that portfolio in the modern era.

Under his leadership at the Federal Ministry of Works, several critical corridors in the South-East have received accelerated attention. These include the Enugu-Onitsha Expressway, the Enugu-Port Harcourt corridor, access roads to the Second Niger Bridge, the dualisation of the Enugu-Abakaliki road, and the Trans-Sahara corridor linking Ebonyi to Benue. Nationally, the Ministry is driving the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, the Sokoto-Badagry Superhighway, and the reconstruction of the Abuja-Kaduna,Kano axis, where an 81-kilometre section was completed in thirteen months.

Umahi has consistently advocated reinforced concrete pavement technology designed to last between fifty and one hundred years. He is known for inspecting sites in person, terminating non-performing contractors, and inviting anti-corruption agencies to verify physical progress. That is a public record measured in kilometres of road, executed contracts, and completed infrastructure.

Now, consider Cubana Chiefpriest. His public profile is largely associated with social events, social media presence, and successive political alignments. In 2023 he was a vocal supporter of Peter Obi. By 2026 he had shifted to support President Tinubu, accepted a directorship in the City Boys Movement in Imo State, and later expressed the view that the President does not fully trust him because of his earlier association with Obi. When he attempted to convert social media visibility into electoral relevance, the voters delivered their own verdict.

In the APC primary for the Orsu/Orlu/Oru East Federal Constituency, reports indicated that he received 14 votes out of more than 2,000 cast. He later stated that he had withdrawn and did not participate.

Whether the claim of withdrawal is accepted or not, the recorded figure remains the same: when the actual count took place, he was not a significant factor.
In April 2024 he was arrested and arraigned by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for naira abuse. He was granted bail in the sum of ten million naira. He later used social media to caution other wealthy individuals that the EFCC was monitoring their activities and that he himself had come close to imprisonment. These are matters of public record.

It is from this platform that he now seeks to question a sitting Minister of Works on issues of enrichment and accountability. A man who has never held elective or appointive public office, and whose recent encounter with the anti-graft agency is a matter of record, now positions himself as the auditor of a minister supervising multi-hundred-billion-naira federal highway projects.

He asserted that the South-East has “nothing to show.” Yet the reconstructed sections of the Enugu-Onitsha road exist and can be driven. The access roads to the Second Niger Bridge exist. Progress on the Enugu-Port Harcourt corridor is visible. Concrete dualisation projects are under way. A man who could not secure 14 votes in his own constituency is poorly placed to declare that a minister with decades of executive experience has produced nothing. There is a clear difference between projects that are delayed and projects that do not exist. Cubana Chiefpriest chose the less accurate description.

He further demanded that ministers produce results in order to promote the candidate. That language reflects the logic of political patronage rather than the logic of citizenship. Public appointment is not a private debt to be repaid through campaign contributions or land allocations. Public office is not a purse to be emptied for political clients. When Cubana Chiefpriest speaks of “payback time,” he is not exposing a systemic flaw; he is repeating one of its most familiar and damaging assumptions.

He also described certain ministries as “bogus.” A nation without functional roads remains constrained in every economic and social respect. There is nothing frivolous about the portfolio that determines whether farmers can move produce to market, whether traders can reach ports, and whether pregnant women can reach hospitals in time. A public figure whose visibility has been built largely around social events is not the most credible voice to redefine what constitutes serious national work.

Criticism of Engr. Umahi is entirely legitimate. Delays on particular corridors can and should be examined. Questions about the pace of delivery, the quality of pavement, or the management of contractors are fair. But criticism that offers no contract numbers, no kilometre counts, no budget lines, and no site inspections remains only noise. Cubana Chiefpriest supplied volume. Volume is not evidence.

Fourteen votes do not constitute a mandate to audit a minister. A man who has never held public office, whose political trajectory so far consists of shifting from one presidential candidate to another and then failing to secure a primary ticket, does not possess the standing to rank the performance of a man who governed a state for eight years and now heads the Federal Ministry of Works.

Umahi’s record can be debated kilometre by kilometre, contract by contract, and pavement quality by pavement quality. That is the proper arena of public scrutiny. What cannot be taken seriously is a lecture delivered by someone whose own political scorecard currently stands at 14 votes and a recent EFCC charge for naira abuse. The minister continues to oversee the construction of roads that will outlast the present controversy. The critic continues to generate commentary that has already exhausted much of its force.

Fourteen votes cannot audit a minister. They can only illustrate the limits of the claim that they can.

Williams Ike, A Public commentator wrote in from Awka, Anambra State.