The Mirage of Mandated Loyalty: Enugu’s Two Million Ghosts and the Limits of Forced Allegiance

By 

Martins Chiedozie Ugwu Johnmartinsworldonline@gmail.com 




“You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot force it to drink.”

This ancient proverb captures the folly behind Enugu State’s recent rush to digitally register two million people into the All Progressives Congress (APC). Registration may place a citizen at the stream, but it does not quench conviction. Loyalty coerced is not loyalty, it is compliance without belief.

The ongoing APC e-registration drive, championed by the Enugu State Government, appears less like grassroots mobilization and more like a political performance aimed at impressing federal power brokers. Reports that civil servants are being pressured to register under threats of victimization are deeply troubling. When a government must rely on coercion to expand its party base, it has already failed the most basic democratic test: winning consent.


Mistaking numbers for legitimacy is a dangerous delusion. A name entered into a digital portal is not a pledge of allegiance. Political theorists describe this as manufactured consent, the illusion of popular support built through pressure rather than persuasion. Compliance can be compelled; conscience cannot. The secret ballot remains the final refuge of free will.


History is unequivocal: forced registration does not translate into electoral victory. When citizens step into the polling booth, they vote based on lived experience, not intimidation. And Enugu people have lived through broken promises.

After repeated assurances of potable water within 180 days that never materialized; after lofty pledges of affordable housing and rural–urban renewal that remain largely unrealized; after the burden of rising taxes without corresponding relief, Enugu citizens understand the difference between propaganda and performance. Development is not announced; it is felt.

This is why the real verdict will not be delivered at APC e-registration kiosks, but at the ballot box.

In his seminal ‘On Liberty’ in 1859, John Stuart Mill warned that power exercised against the will of the people corrodes liberty rather than protects it. What we see today is not political strength but insecurity, an attempt to substitute coercion for credibility. Genuine authority flows from trust, not threats.


Enugu’s people are not political chattel. They are discerning voters with memories, expectations, and agency. Inflated party registers may look impressive on screens, but elections are won by conviction, not compulsion.


You may lead the people to the stream of registration. But when election day comes, they alone will decide where their votes flow.


By Martins Chiedozie Ugwu

Johnmartinsworldonline@gmail.com

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