National Vice Chairman, South-South of the Nyesom Wike-led faction of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Chief Daniel Osi Orbih, has died.
He passed on Monday, August 31, 2026, aged 64.
A statement signed on behalf of his family by Francis Orbih, Esq. announced the death.
It said, “With profound sadness and a heavy heart but in total submission to the will of the Almighty God, the family of Chief M.C.K. Orbih announce the passing of our beloved brother, husband, father and uncle, Chief Daniel Osi Orbih.”
He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Florence Orbih; daughters Ms. Winifred Anwosiobor Orbih and Dr. Mildred Omonemi Orbih; and other members of the extended family.
Born and bred in Edo State, Dan Orbih was a a business man but politics was his calling.
He was not the loudest man in the room. He didn’t need to be. While others chased microphones, Orbih chased structures.
During the height of Adams Oshiomhole’s dominance in Edo, when PDP seemed finished in the state, Orbih kept the embers burning.
Under him, PDP — as an opposition — still delivered National Assembly seats and presidential votes in Edo. That was his magic: organising at the grassroots when the odds were stacked.
Colleagues say he believed in loyalty, in ward-by-ward politics, and in finishing what he started. He was calm outside, steel inside.
—THE POLITICAL IMPACT: THE MAN WHO REWROTE THE SOUTH-SOUTH—
If you want to understand Dan Orbih’s place in Nigerian politics, go back to 2013.
That year, he conducted the consequential PDP South-South Congress that ended Rotimi Amaechi’s hold on the zone and handed the structure to Nyesom Wike.
It was clean. It was clinical. And it changed everything.
From that congress, Wike’s path to Government House in Rivers was cleared. From there, Wike became a national force.
Orbih didn’t just deliver a congress. He delivered a dynasty.
In the years that followed, as PDP fractured, “Kulukulu 1” became the anchor of the Wike camp in the South-South. He was the fixer, the stabiliser, the man who could call six governors and make them sit at one table.
Even in death, his fingerprints are on every major PDP structure from Calabar to Asaba.
—AN EDO LOSS, A NATIONAL VOID—
For Edo, Orbih was more than a party leader. He was proof that you could be in opposition and still win.
For the PDP, he was the bridge between old PDP discipline and new PDP power politics.
For Wike, he was the friend who stood in the trenches in 2013 and never left.
Tributes have started pouring in from across the South-South. Party men, rivals, and even those he defeated politically all agree on one thing: Edo has lost a giant.
“Kulukulu 1” may be gone. But the structure he built, the congresses he won, and the loyalty he commanded will outlive him.
Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of THE CONCLAVE online newspaper, Mr Sufuyan Ojeifo, who shared a close relationship with Dan Orbih while both were loyalists of Chief Tony Anenih, expressed shock at Orbih’s passing. He prayed that the soul of Chief Daniel Osi Orbih, Esama of Edo politics, would rest in peace.
Further funeral arrangements will be announced by the family in due course.
