In the world of Nigerian politics, shifting alliances is a standard playbook move, but celebrity businessman Pascal Okechukwu—popularly known as Cubana Chief Priest—admits his past choices are still haunting him in the corridors of power.
Despite currently serving as the Imo State Coordinator for the pro-Tinubu City Boys Movement, the socialite revealed that President Bola Tinubu still views him with a healthy dose of skepticism. Speaking during a viral livestream with popular content creator Peller on Wednesday, Chief Priest touched on the intersection of his ethnicity and his 2023 voting record.
“President Bola Tinubu doesn’t really trust me as an Igbo man,” he explained frankly in Nigerian Pidgin. “He looks at me with one eye because he knows I worked for Peter Obi during the last election.”
When pressed by Peller on why he ultimately dumped Peter Obi to jump onto the Tinubu bandwagon, the self-proclaimed celebrity barman didn’t mince words. Chalking it up to raw political pragmatism, he noted that he simply wanted to stop backing the losing side, invoking a classic proverb: “Because I don’t want to lose again. They say ‘first fool no be fool, na the second fool be proper fool.’”
Dropping the diplomatic filter entirely, Chief Priest went on to dismiss Peter Obi’s chances in the upcoming 2027 presidential race. He labeled the newly cleared Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) aspirant as “not serious,” boldly predicting that the election will ultimately be won by “the serious people.”
The viral clip quickly divided the internet. Critics wasted no time calling out Cubana Chief Priest for what they termed blatant political flip-flopping, accusing him of abandoning the collective Igbo political cause for personal gain. However, pragmatists viewed his logic as a straightforward survival strategy in a political landscape where aligning with the opposition often means being left out in the cold.
It’s a striking shift for the socialite, who heavily leveraged his massive platform for Obi and the Labour Party during the 2023 cycle. Today, he is fully aligned with Tinubu’s ruling APC. Proving his commitment to the party, he recently picked up an APC expression of interest form for a House of Representatives ticket, experiencing the harsh realities of the game firsthand during Saturday’s primary elections.
