OPINION: Still Living in Bondage: the sequel to Andy Okeke’s betrayal

Kenneth Okonkwo may have played Andy Okeke in Living in Bondage, but history has provided a crueler irony: it is increasingly apparent that Andy Okeke is not just the role he plays. That was the prophecy he brought.

The tragedy of Kenneth Okonkwo is not that he was controversial in Nigerian politics. Nigerian politics itself is a market for controversy. The tragedy is that Andy Okeke’s moral architecture – ambition without loyalty, progress without roots, success bought through betrayal – seems to have escaped the screen and followed the actor into public life.

In the film, Andy Okeke starts out as an ordinary man who is frustrated with his limitations. Poverty humiliated him. The lack of clarity suffocated him. He wants more than just survival; he wants to come. He wants recognition. Honor. Strength. Visibility. Hunger itself is not evil. What destroys Andy is the method he chooses to satisfy her. That’s the genius of this film. Andy wasn’t born evil. He was tempted. It breaks down gradually. He entered a system that promised improvement but demanded sacrifice. And once inside the system, betrayal becomes the currency of ownership. This is where the eerie parallels with Kenneth Okonkwo emerge.

In the film, Andy sacrifices Merit, the person who trusts him the most. In contemporary Nigerian politics, critics increasingly see Peter Obi occupying such a symbolic position. Whether one fully agrees with that interpretation or not is political perception that determines. Kenneth Okonkwo rose to renewed national relevance largely through the Obidient movement around Peter Obi. The movement gave him ideological oxygen, visibility and a new political identity beyond Nollywood nostalgia. He is known not only as an actor involved in politics, but also as a public intellectual voice in a movement that many young Nigerians give moral hope to. But politics, like the occult brotherhood in Living in Bondage, has its own rituals of initiation and survival.

Soon there was disillusionment, public criticism, strategic distancing, and ultimately division. What once appeared to be solidarity has now turned into antagonism. The language changes. Loyalty evaporates. And to many observers, it looked eerily familiar: another Andy Okeke moment. Another sacrifice on the altar of ambition. Of course the comparison is metaphorical, not literal. Peter Obi is not Merit. Nigerian political parties are not sanctuaries of magic. Yet metaphors are important because they reveal the moral patterns behind apparent events.

In Living in Bondage, the occult is a mechanism of corruption as the film emerges from a Nigeria haunted by fears of ritual wealth and mysterious powers. Nowadays, magic has changed its form. The shrine now sports the party’s logo. His mantra is television interviews, coalition meetings, strategic defections and political calculations. The priests were power brokers. The sacrifices are principles, loyalty, friendship, and ideological consistency. Slavery still exists.

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Andy Okeke was caught in an occult pact that brought him wealth but drained his soul. Kenneth Okonkwo seems trapped in the modern convention of political relevance – the endless hunger to remain visible, influential, quoted, positioned and aligned with power. In both cases, slavery was not physical. It is moral and spiritual. This is why the comparison feels so powerful and unsettling. Andy’s tragedy is not only that he betrayed Merit. After getting everything he wanted, he lost the ability to live at peace with himself. Wealth brings torment, not satisfaction. He is haunted by the ghost of what he sacrificed.

There is something deeply symbolic in watching Kenneth Okonkwo – once the hero of Nigeria’s greatest cinematic cautionary tale of ambition and betrayal – navigate a political space defined by shifting loyalties, ideological instability and performative anger. One begins to wonder whether Living in Bondage is less fiction than diagnosis.

The scary thing about slavery was that the people in it rarely knew they were bound. Andy believes he became free when he joined a cult. In fact, every step upwards tightened the chains around his soul. That’s the main metaphor here.

Power can be a form of spiritual captivity. Politics can become addicted to relevance. The public eye can be a sacred place where faith is sacrificed every day. One does not need candles, blood rituals, or dark robes to lose one’s moral center. Sometimes all it takes is applause, a microphone, a television camera, a party meeting and the intoxicating fear of becoming politically irrelevant. Kenneth Okonkwo’s public journey increasingly resembles such captivity.

This is not an argument that politicians should not disagree or develop. Political differences of opinion are normal. True democracy requires ideological debate. The issue is deeper than disagreement. This is a perception of transactional loyalty – a feeling that relationships and goals are useless when they no longer fulfill ambitions. That is Andy Okeke’s biggest sin. He turns human loyalty into a ladder. And that’s why its symbolism remains devastating.

Ultimately, Living in Bondage was never really about the occult. Witchcraft is simply the language Nigerians use to explain corruption, greed, betrayal and moral collapse. The real subject of the film is what happens when ambition escapes conscience. That question still haunts Nigeria today.

Kenneth Okonkwo may have left the set decades ago, but Andy Okeke’s shadow still seems to follow him. His clothes have changed. The stage has changed. The ritual has changed. But the deeper shackles – the stifling of ambition without a moral foundation – are still very frightening. And perhaps that’s the ultimate irony.

Andy Okeke spends the entire film seeking freedom through power, only to find that every immoral shortcut creates a new chain. Decades later, Kenneth Okonkwo will apparently play the sequel in real life.

By: Vitus Ozoke, a lawyer, human rights activist, and public affairs analyst.