Human rights activist and former chairman of Nigeria’s Human Rights Commission, Professor Chidi Odinkalu, has accepted the challenge by the Director-General of the Imo State Orientation Agency, Evangelist Ethelbert Okere, for a debate with the Imo state governor, Senator Hope Uzodimma. Professor Odinkalu in a statement on his official X (former Twitter) handle on Wednesday June 10, 2026 said that while he accepts the challenge, the topic of the debate must be focused on the governor’s performance in office. “I accept the challenge. Please confirm to Ethelbert that I will debate with @ Hope Uzodimma…”, the statement read in part.
Evangelist Okere had in an article entitled, “Chidi Odinkalu And The Diaspora Igbo”, made the challenge while responding to earlier scathing remarks by Odinkalu on Governor Uzodimma. Odinkalu had, while commenting on an AI-doctored trending video on Governor Uzodimma’s lecture at the Federal University of Technology (FUTO) on Thursday June 4, 2026, wrote “There is a degree of illiteracy that the professional rigging of elections and dubious court orders even from @ Supreme Court of Nigeria cannot clean up”.
Okere had in his lengthy article that went virile on several social media alluded to Odinkalu as “suffering from a fixation over fellow members of the elite in his state…” and accused him of always trailing Governor Uzodimma. “… to sniff anything that would enable him update his ubiquitous gaffes in the social media”; and then went ahead to challenge Odinkalu “… to choose any topic outside technical Law for a debate with Governor Uzodimma and let’s see how it will go:
