Beyond the Tail and the Cow: Prudence, Possibility, and the Ethics of Political Strategy in a Plural Democracy -By Dr. Anselm C. Onuorah

Every political metaphor carries a metaphysics. When Governor Chukwuma Soludo spoke of Ndigbo “cutting the tail of the cow,” he invoked not just strategy but a whole conception of time, possibility, and agency. Valentine Obienyem’s essay rightly subjects that metaphor to philosophical scrutiny. For philosophy begins where slogans end: by asking what kind of future a people imagine when they describe their present.

The central question is not whether the “cow” is desirable. All parties agree on the goal of full participation, justice, and national greatness. The deeper question is epistemological and ethical: how should a people act in a world of constraints without surrendering their horizon of wholeness? Must prudence be mistaken for resignation? Must the rejection of illusions become the rejection of incremental gains? My argument is that a mature political imagination holds both the ideal and the possible in tension, and that strategy, rightly understood, is the bridge between them.

Mr. Valentine Obienyem’s essay “Soludo and the Cow’s Tail” raises an important question: what political imagination should guide Ndigbo and indeed all Nigerians in a competitive federation? His critique of Governor Charles Soludo’s “tail of the cow” metaphor is passionate and philosophically framed. Yet my argument is necessary, not to defend any person, but to correct the conceptual binary that frames strategy as surrender, and prudence as resignation.

1. The Philosophy of Prudence vs. the Metaphysics of All-or-Nothing 

Obienyem reads Soludo’s metaphor as “incestuous reasoning” that internalizes exclusion. But political philosophy has long distinguished between telos and tactics. Aristotle, in Nicomachean Ethics VI.5, defines phronesis or practical wisdom as the virtue of choosing the right means to the good end in contingent circumstances. A hunter who secures the tail when the cow cannot be brought down has not abandoned the cow; he has avoided returning empty-handed while planning the next hunt.

To insist that “no hunter hangs the tail as trophy” is rhetorically strong, but it ignores Machiavelli’s counsel in The Prince, Ch. 25: Fortuna governs half our actions; the wise prince adapts. Soludo’s “tail” is not a doctrine of permanent limitation. It is a Machiavellian-Aristotelian reading of Nigerian federal politics: engage current structures, extract maximum value, and expand leverage for the next round. Rejecting partial gains because they are partial is what game theorists call the “Nash demand for perfection” a strategy that often yields zero payoff.

2. Political Theory: Federalism as Bargaining, Not Conquest 

Obienyem contrasts the “tail” with the “whole cow,” implying a zero-sum seizure of power. But Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution designs a federation, not a unitary prize. K.C. Wheare, in Federal Government, and A.V. Dicey before him, argued that federalism thrives on incremental bargaining, coalition-building, and “cooperative advantage,” not on metaphors of conquest.

Emilokan, referenced by Obienyem, was an assertion of political agency within a party structure. Soludo’s “tail” is the converse: an assertion of agency within a national structure where no single group holds a majority. To frame both as mutually exclusive is to misunderstand democratic politics. As John Rawls argues in Political Liberalism, a plural society advances through “overlapping consensus” where groups secure partial goods today while negotiating the architecture of tomorrow. The “tail” is today’s overlapping consensus; the “cow” is the constitutional redesign that requires supermajorities Ndigbo alone cannot command.

3. Theology: The Ethics of Stewardship and the Parable of Talents 

Theologically, the impulse to reject “tails” risks the error of the servant who buried his talent because the master demanded five. In Matthew 25:14-30, the master commends not the one who waited for perfect conditions, but the one who traded with what he had and produced increase. St. Augustine, in City of God, similarly argues that Christians must seek temporal peace and civic goods even within imperfect civitates terrenae, while keeping their eyes on the civitas Dei.

Applied politically: to insist that Ndigbo must either take the presidency or reject engagement is to bury the talent of governorships, legislative seats, ministerial portfolios, federal agencies, and economic influence that can be secured now. These are not “tails.” They are the material basis for building the capacity, alliances, and credibility required to contest for the “cow” later. As Fr. Matthew Kukah often reminds us, politics is the art of the possible; morality demands we do the possible while pursuing the ideal.

4. Peter Obi, Soludo, and the False Dichotomy 

Obienyem correctly notes that Peter Obi’s appeal transcends ethnicity. That is precisely why Soludo’s strategy and Obi’s national candidacy are not opposed. One addresses the long game of institutional influence; the other addresses the immediate contest for executive power. To force Ndigbo to choose between “tail politics” and “Obi politics” is a false dichotomy. Both are needed. Obi expands the moral imagination of what is possible; Soludo’s approach secures the infrastructural goods that make future possibilities real, roads, digital infrastructure, education, and fiscal credibility in Anambra that other states can point to.

History supports this dual track. The Igbo post-civil war reconstruction was not achieved by waiting for a total political reversal, but by combining enterprise, education, and strategic engagement with the federal center while keeping cultural and economic autonomy intact. That was “tail” strategy that rebuilt a “cow.”

5. Toward a Grammar of Wholeness Without Illusions 

Obienyem’s final call for a Nigeria of competence, justice, and national greatness is the destination we all share. Where we differ is the path. A grammar of wholeness does not require pretending that the cow is unguarded. It requires, as Reinhold Niebuhr wrote in Moral Man and Immoral Society, the marriage of moral idealism with political realism.

To call Soludo’s metaphor an “insult” is to personalize a structural argument. The real insult to Ndigbo would be a political doctrine that celebrates noble defeat while children lack schools, roads, and jobs. A people secure their future not only by dreaming of the whole cow, but by having the discipline to cut, preserve, and invest the tail until they can raise their own herd.

Conclusion 

Mr. Obienyem’s essay is a necessary warning against the seduction of low expectations. My argument is a necessary warning against the seduction of pure abstraction. Between the tail and the cow lies the hard work of politics: alliance, institution-building, and incremental sovereignty. Ndigbo, like all Nigerians, deserve both the vision of wholeness and the prudence to secure gains while that vision is pursued.

The task is not to choose between tail and cow. The task is to ensure that today’s tail becomes tomorrow’s capital for owning the ranch.

 Dr Anslem Onuorah is a Nigerian writer, teacher and public affairs analyst; he contributed this piece in response to Valentine Obienyem’s piece, ‘Soludo and the Cow Tail’.