WHAT started as isolated rantings of an attention-seeking wannabe critic and was treated as clownish vituperations has dovetailed into a growing industry in Nigeria’s political space. With just a few months to the presidential election of 2023, nobody paid attention when he resigned from the then established Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to pick the ticket of a relatively unknown Labour Party. To the consternation of all, he came a close third in a poll none of the candidates had a commanding lead among the three main contenders. So impressive was his performance that many of his followers even touted that he won the election.
That is the Cinderella-like story of Mr. Peter Obi, a man without a structure, godfather or moneybag sponsors and dared to run to be president.
From the comical tracking of what Peter Obi says or not, his reactions to national issues, Reno Omokri carved a niche for himself as the unofficial attack dog for President Bola Tinubu on Peter Obi affairs. It was akin to a portfolio and he diligently treated it as such. Given his antecedence for his vociferous attacks on Tinubu when he was a presidential aspirant, his attacks on Obi was seen as a way of restitution to walk into the good books of now President Tinubu. And it worked for him. Omokri was personally received by the president in the hallowed chambers of Aso Rock Villa and was subsequently named among ambassador-nominees.
Just when it was thought Omokri was a lone ranger in his Obi portfolio, others joined the chorus of vilifying the former Anambra State governor. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Governor of Lagos, said Obi lacks the moral authority to criticise President Bola Tinubu’s handling of the Nigerian economy. According to Sanwo-Olu, Obi has nothing but poverty to show for his eight-year tenure as Anambra governor.
The plank of his criticism is Obi’s presentation at Johns Hopkins University. Speaking on Nigeria’s dwindling economy, Peter Obi said Nigeria’s worsening poverty has made her the poverty capital of the world from being at a comparative level with China and Vietnam in 1990.
He argued that strong political leadership focusing on education, healthcare, and poverty alleviation is the critical difference between Nigeria and these nations.
At the time, Obi became governor of Anambra State on March 17, 2006 and served a second four-year period, Sanwo-Olu was yet to figure in the jig puzzle of the choice of governor. When Sanwo-Olu was eventually rail-roaded into the Lagos top seat in May 2019, Obi had ceased to be governor five years earlier.
Chukwuma Charles Soludo, one-time governor of the Central Bank and now governor of Anambra State, would not miss the opportunity to join in bashing Obi, a personal past time.
He found it when Tinubu commissioned some projects in the state recently. In his words, the only time a sitting president commissioned a project in the state was when a private refinery was commissioned by then President Goodluck Jonathan, a cheeky and mischievous reference to Obi, who was governor then. The only other time, in Soludo’s thinking, is when Tinubu came to commission some projects he executed. He forgot to credit Reno Omokri with the brewery reference. Not to left out, Edo State governor, Senator Monday Okpebholo. He labelled Obi disrespectful for calling out the controversy surrounding his election as governor.
As Nigerians are mourning the passing of elder statesman and Niger Delta leader, Chief, Edwin Clark, Senator President Godswill Akpabio chose what was supposed to be a time for solemn tribute by the Senate to pour tirades on the same Peter Obi. While calling for a moment of silence for the late first republic information minister, Akpabio taunted Obi with reference to the intractable crisis in Labour Party. “If you cannot even resolve the crisis in that Labour Party, is it the crisis of Boko Haram that you will come and resolve in Nigeria?”, Akpabio jibed.
In his thinking, rather than comment on national issues or the debilitating state of the economy, Obi should concentrate on resolving the crisis in his Labour Party.
With such mindset, it is clear that addressing the poor quality of living of the people is not on the front burners of the leadership. Probably, Akpabio who got so impressed with the austere life of late Pope Francis whose burial he led the federal government delegation to attend that he virtually asked Nigerians to be inspired by the Catholic Pontiff’s life than complain about poverty.
Of course, Bayo Onanuga, Tinubu’s spokesman, always took delight in regularly dishing out his own version of Peter Obi-mania.
A common denominator of the diatribes against Obi is the absence of any contradiction of the points he raised and the positions he took. Obi did not attack anyone, rather, he objected to the policies adopted by the government. In the medley of criticisms, no one presented alternative facts or counterfoils to the issues. They all took turns to label him as unpatriotic and demarketing Nigeria, whatever that means. In a global village where developments everywhere are available at the touch of a bottom real time, it is idiotic to assume that only when some people question the level of poverty in the country is the world aware that more Nigerians than elsewhere in the world are living in multi-dimensional poverty.
In the weird world of those feeding from the common patrimony of the people, holding public office is patriotism while calling for the pervading poverty to be addressed is intemperate, ungodly, unpatriotic, demarketing and attempt at destabilising the country.
Peter Obi is not in government. He is not in power. Yet, he is the potshot of anyone in power or seeks the patronage of those in power. The pre-occupation of those holding the various levers of power seems to be to discredit Peter Obi by all means. Unfortunately, it portends the fact that governance has all but ended and everything is now about ensuring that the status quo remains in 2027, again, by all means.
If the intention is to make Obi an instrument of distraction from the reality of the nightmare Nigerians are going through, I am not sure the strategy is working or will ever work. Peter Obi has become a voice for the people ,who are too challenged with the horrors of daily living to even speak. They find in him a leader that says things that resonate with them. He has become the most talked about leader not just by the government, but also the people, albeit from polar perspectives.
In 2023, Obi needed less than a year to reshape the political landscape. He has had two years since while another two years beckons. If only the federal government apparatchiks can read the people’s lip.
