Since the build up to the 2023 presidential polls and the eventual catastrophic and controversial outcome, Peter Obi has become a reoccurring political thermometer with which political temperature is gauged, positively or negatively, depending on the divide you stand.
His taxonomic difference, based on antecedents and stoic character, seems to be his bane instead of a celebrated advantage. But that is Nigeria for you! I read through his message, sharing his harrowing experiences and the reason he had to leave the ADC. He touched on the known and the familiar; and the desperate resolve by state machinery to frustrate and chase him away just like they did when he was with the Labour Party.
To some, Peter Obi has become a subject of vilification, abuse, hatred and cheap blackmail all because he’s looking for a stainless nest, devoid of the old Mother Bird’s dung. We all know and agree that this is truly a difficult task, yet, someone dares to make the difference. In a nation where the rule is the exception, where it is abnormal to be normal, one can understand the deliberately orchestrated tirades being hauled at the innocent all the time.
Here’s a man who once called on the anti-corruption agencies to come over to audit his two tenures when he was about to complete his gubernatorial service to his people. That was a novelty in our nation. But like the proverbial critic that we all are, instead of watching and relishing the dancing steps of the beautiful maiden, we chose to look at the dirt in her armpit.
Truly, if I may ask; is Peter Obi the problem of Nigeria? What is wrong with an assertive doggedness to prove that something good can still come out of Nazareth, revealing hope in an extremely hopeless situation? Why can’t we for a moment, forget ethnicity and forgive excusable inconsistencies so mildly as looking for a platform to exhale politically, while we concentrate on battling with the existential threat that has become our policy, polity and politics? What’s the matter with Nigerians?
Those who are accusing and abusing Peter Obi of and for cross-carpeting at the “slightest” opportunity should kindly be less judgemental. They should first of all, question the system that made the formation of political parties in Nigeria inorganic, rendering Parties borderless and fluid. Paradoxically, this is the political change that Peter Obi, who has become today’s victim, is shouting hoarse about.
As Peter Obi moves to NDC, let us for a moment, interrogate his revealed reasons and the rightness of such leviathan emasculation by the powers that be. Even at the NDC, unconfirmed sources revealed a waiting trouble, a possibly orchestrated one, waiting for Peter Obi.
The deliberate animosity against one man, just one man, is an undeniable pointer to the enormity of weight, carriage and the propensity of such a person to upturn the age long applecart that held us down by the jugular as a nation. The opaque provisions of the electoral Act and the stealthy obstacles it places on the way is another thing all together. This is why I often conclude that Peter Gregory Onwubuasi Obi may end up as the President that Nigeria desperately needed but never had.
