There is a novelty in today’s political landscape in Nigeria. Real hard power is in the hands of President Bola Tinubu, an elected leader. On the other hand, soft populist power is in the hands of an unelected aspirant to the throne, Mr. Peter Obi.
For good or for ill, President Bola Tinubu is ruling Nigeria. But Peter Obi is reigning all over the country. The name on nearly every lip on the Nigerian urban street or village bush path is that of Mr. Peter Obi, a man who has come to personify the dreams and longings of most ordinary Nigerians for the ideal leadership model for a nation tormented for so long by an embarrassing lack of purposeful and sincere leadership.
As it were, we have a ruler put in place by the mechanics of the democratic process and his antithesis erected by popular acclaim in the minds of the urban street and village people. The elected leader lives, rent -free, in the stifling opulence of the Presidential Villa in Abuja. The other man lives everywhere in the hearts and minds of the people who call this land their home.
To a large extent, the whole drama of the 2027 presidential election will play out as a vicious referendum to choose between the two men as the future president of the country after 2027.
Over two years ahead of 2027, the political landscape has donned the garb of active electioneering and festive campaigning. Wherever Mr. Peter Obi goes in the country, a certain celebratory air follows him. The crowds gather in nearly uncontrollable throngs. People scramble to catch a glimpse of the man dressed mostly in black.
Even if he does nothing, the people are happy that the man visits their area and reaches out to touch their points of pain wherever they may be. At IDP camps, in villages newly razed by the fire of misguided anger, in poor homes newly bereaved by irate violence and in markets razed and looted by the anger of frustration. In prayer on Fridays or supplication on Sundays, Mr. Peter Obi joins us.
He was only a presidential candidate back in 2023. Today, he is not anybody’s presidential candidate. In a nation fiercely divided between those empowered to rule and the majority condemned to sigh everyday, Peter Obi is merely aligned with the emergent undigested opposition alliance, uncertain where to finally pitch his political tent.
But for now in every way, Peter Obi is the happening thing in our national politics. His presence makes the people happy but makes fellow politicians uneasy.
Rightly or wrongly, Peter Obi has touched a vital node among ordinary Nigerians. He addresses their worries; promises to reduce their burdens and reconnects them with their national heritage. Though a comfortable and successful entrepreneur, Obi eschews the arrogance of the moneyed oligarchy. His tastes are modest just as he supports good causes all over the country with his hard earned resources.
On the other hand, his fellow politicians and rich elite are uncomfortable with Obi. They fear that he will upturn their gravy train. Huge imported SUVs will go out of fashion to be replaced by ordinary people movers.
Palaces and mansions paid for with public money will go out of vogue. Free endless nightly champagne orgies will not be a benefit for those who rule us. Obi has promised to reverse these privileges and reduce their excessive perquisites. He will end the entitlement state and put Nigerians back to work for the prosperity we desire.
No more white elephants. No further phantom projects. No Alaskan highways running from Sokoto to Badagry to be completed centuries after we have all died. An end to endless borrowing to fund government as showmanship.
The prosperity of the nation will no longer be measured in statistical publications and Power Point projections but in health clinics where people go to seek life and cure, schools where learning takes place and real lives of real people that inch away from poverty with each passing day. Peter Obi’s vision of development and the future of Nigeria is frightening to the business and political elite.
Something even more curious has now happened. By the logic of the present state of our political discourse, Peter Obi can as well be said to have hired President Tinubu as his 2027 campaign manager. Each step, each statement Tinubu makes reinforces an Obi argument. Every misfortune that befalls the nation under Tinubu’s watch is weaponized by the Peter Obi squad.
Every policy that punishes the people is debited from Tinubu’s account and its opposite credited to Obi’s looming paradise. Every bandit attack, every armed robbery, each kidnapping and abduction, every company that shuts down because power is too costly under Tinubu’s watch is yet another reason why Tinubu is no good for the job he got and why Peter Obi should come and assume the office in 2027.
In everyday real life, in the legacy media and overwhelmingly in the social media, we now seem to be living in the Age of Peter Obi. Fear has gripped the political space. Some incumbents can hardly hide their fear. That is why some governors are fretting and shaking. And politicians too are frightened that something in the horizon is a threat to their good life.
Edo state’s semi illiterate governor cannot stand the Obi frenzy anymore. He has issued a decree that Obi can only visit the state after due ‘security’ clearance. An earlier decree had been issued by the Benue governor along the same lines. It does not matter if the man is coming to commiserate either the bereaved or donate money to the many displaced. Just don’t come! Keep your money and compassion!
And these are duly elected governors who claim overwhelming INEC fabricated mandates. And yet they are afraid of a lone citizen with no INEC result sheet, no armed goons, no authorized state funded hooligans. Just an ordinary man not surrounded by government goons or masked hooligans; merely an ordinary man wearing cheap clothes and throw- away shoes armed with an alternative truth.
Voices of sensible Nigerians have entered the fray. The basic freedom of a Nigerian to move around freely, to visit the people in their places of joy or pain is being abridged and threatened by elected or appointed officialdom . Femi Falana had threatened to press charges of human rights violations. Ohanaeze has warned against profiling Obi. The Obidients have threatened reprisals if any harm should come to Obi.
Earlier in the week, it was Obi’s 64th birthday. A coalition of Kaduna state youth had organized a rally and street march to celebrate the man. But the Kaduna state police command will not hear of it. It proscribed a rally it knew nothing about, citing the usual fear of hijack by hoodlums and criminals.
Obi’s name in the streets will cause insecurity in a state that has been a hotbed of reql insecurity for more thqn a decade! Ordinary innocent Nigerians just joining a birthday street procession will cause an insecurity that has become a permanent feature of our national reality. Ordinary innocent Nigerians intent on celebrating another citizen’s birthday were branded by the police before they left their homes!
For the first time in our national politics, a fear factor has been activated in our political unconscious. Prefects and captains of the criminal state are frightened. I am not sure whether frightening the gangster state is good politics. But Obi is not a usual politician. He shoots straight. He is not in the business of doublespeak.
The people love him for the truth he tells and stands for. But political truth is different from religious truth. Reality is more complex than Peter Obi’s utopian vision. The crises that have humbled and shredded our nation come from diverse sources and have taken time to entrench. They need time and rigor to address and surmount. Obi says he is ready to work so that Nigeria can be made to work for us all. That is the difference I see him bringing to the table. Populism is helped when it is armed with realism.
Those afraid of the Obi factor like the governors in Edo and Benue are wide off the mark. Their utterances and actions are in fact treasonous. How can a democratically elected governor of the federal republic of Nigeria threaten to prevent a fellow Nigerian from moving freely into and out of any part of the country. The man is not a criminal.
He is not coming to your state to kidnap, abduct, steal or incite. He may be coming to donate money or food items to the distressed or show solidarity with those afflicted by our present myriad of adversity. Persons who lack a basic understanding of basic freedoms and liberties have no business assuming the lofty office and fancy titles of governor let alone presiding over the life and death of entire states.
But Nigerians are not detracted or distracted. Institutions and organizations are latching on to the Peter Obi brand magic and pull. A little known Dominion University in Ibadan has just appointed Obi its pro-Chancellor. Within 24 hours, its Instagram followers grew from 530 to over 4,000! If Obi attends your event, your public rating skyrockets and your political rating also shoots up.
Peter is my friend and brother. Two years ago when I turned 70, my children organised a dinner at the Ikeja Marriott . I asked them to invite my friends including Peter to join us at dinner. I didn’t hear from him. But midway in the dinner, all hell was let loose. Peter emerged. The music changed. My private dinner became a political jamboree.
But he enjoyed the food and the atmosphere of light hearted recollections and jokes. The crowd saw a messiah in making. Peter saw companionship and a chance to be among friends to honour me! Obis presence is now a requirement. He was vastly blamed for not being at Buhari’s burial. His presence at the Awujale’s condolences was hailed. Obis presence at nearly every event all over Nigeria is as important as his absence. Hardly any other political figure other than the President commands such significance in today’s Nigeria.
While the major political parties may yet await their ritual conventions to decide their flag bearers, the public mind seems to have settled the matter. Incumbent president Tinubu is digging in, using incumbency power to expand his political reach and using patronage to widen electoral possibilities for his party. His ruling APC has rejigged its structure. It has chosen a party man from Plateau with a Vietnamese sounding name as replacement Chairman after chasing away the dollar loving Ganduje who has been appointed to collect tolls at all airports.
On its part, the new ADC coalition is gearing up as an opposition fountain head. It is on a nationwide shopping spree for credible and politically influential members who are sufficiently hungry to frighten off the sitting APC people. It is a scramble for the keys of the rent free presidential accommodation at Aso Rock as well as the combination for the vault of the Central Bank and the money safes of the NNPCL.
The stakes to snatch apex power from a Nigerian incumbent are as high as the pile of cash in either the CBN or the NNPCL. They are even more grave and dangerous. But democratic change demands that those who seek to topple the pinnacle of power cannot afford to be afraid of even the most deadly of Macchiavelli’s rough tools and tactics. Those same very tools are available in the open market for all power seekers.
Hidden beneath the national excitement about the prospect of an Obi presidency is that Obi has touched Nigeria in sensitive places. Obi is an Igbo man. There is a contradiction here. Peter Obi has come to Nigeria seeking an opportunity to rule the nation differently not because he is Igbo.
Many Nigerians see him for what he is; a sincere advocate of good governance. But many insist on seeing him as an Igbo politician. Peter is many things rolled into one. He is an exemplary Nigerian. He is a politician. He is a business man. He is of Igbo extraction. Understanding him requires a mixture of these understandings.
There is none of these attributes that should make Peter any less qualified to seek Nigeria’s presidency. And there is nothing in the Nigerian air, land or sea that should exclude Mr. Obi or anyone else who honestly seeks to posit an alterantive to Mr. Tinubu’s rule. Democracy permits that imperative.
The imperative that has created the Peter Obi populist movement is available to any other member of the budding opposition. But in order for another voice of opposition to arise and gain competing dominance with the incumbent to the extent of threatening it as widely as the Peter Obi movement, it must find its own original voice and find the consistency of messaging that has produced Mr. Obi.
Unlike in 2023, Peter has found his solid ground. He should accord to fellow Nigerian citizens their due respect. But he must stand up never to be intimidated by anyone or group. His Igbo identity should be only an added benefit. Nigeria owes the Igbos arrears of justice.
That added advantage should embolden his quest but he must come to Nigeria with courage and boldness, not a beggarly meekness. He must have at the back of his mind the wisdom that a lion never gives birth to a coward.