THE EMPERORS AND THEIR ENVIOUS BAND

There’s none better equipped to lead Nigeria than Peter Obi, argues Okechukwu Udeagwu

One singular summation one could make from online and personal interactions with contacts on the wave and rave of Peter Gregory Obi’s presidential election candidacy is“envy,” to call a spade a spade.

Even when cornered on his oozing competence and capacity over and above his rivals the resonating retort becomes he cannot win election on social media. As if anyone ever does! Next is the accusation, “his brothers” (read: the Igbo or as they say Igbos) are making him unacceptable to other ethnic groups.

Ironically, the erstwhile refrain has always been Igbos don’t love or support themselves, they are never united, as fallacious as these decidedly are! Two Yorubas, Olu Falae and Olusegun Obasanjo vied against each other in 1999 as two Fulanis, Muhammadu Buhari and Atiku Abubakar sparred in 2019. Their ethnic unity was never contested. 

But, perhaps, there’s some truth in those accusation of disunity among the Igbo. An Orji Uzor Kalu or Ike Ekweremadu or Rochas Okorocha, indeed, any one of the regular politicians of Igbo extraction would not, in fact, never get such support from the Igbo. Knowing the Igbo, they would not only secretly sneer but publicly excoriate them. The regular politicians of Igbo extraction who are scoffing at PGO are acting out their envy even if couched as ‘political reality’ as they unashamedly claim. Fact.

So what is it about Peter Gregory Obi that stands him out? A vulcaniser in Abakiliki or Argungu or Abak or Abeokuta or Abraka would simply summarise it as his humility, simplicity and patriotism – no need mentioning competence and capacity. Peter Gregory Obi personae and philosophy have demystified leadership even as a flash phenomenon – at whatever levels, corporate or state, private or public sector.

Now, for the umpteenth time I’d rehash – Nigeria’s flawed leadership selection process would need to self-destruct to enthrone a PGO to the Presidency. This makes it the more a Herculean task for him and promoters.

Perhaps it is due to these facts that the disinherited young and not-so young Nigerians are routing for him. Would their social media solidarity translate to electoral fortunes? Time, indeed, February 2023 would tell. But, the other establishment candidates, the old guards that have kept Nigeria and her people down as well as their associates, supporters and errand men and women who pick the crumbs are fuming at the effrontery and temerity. They scoff at him for daring and sneer at what they call his online support that’s just mere noise. And as usual, they put his kinsmen and women on guilt trip – the preponderance of their support makes him Igbo than Nigerian president in a bid to de-market his candidacy and railroad his electability.

Ironically, if rival candidates have such followership as PGO, these same ‘knowledgeable politicians and supporters’ would announce the result before the poll. And their crookedness (read: good understanding of the system) and their deep pockets (with stolen money) are what stands them in good stead. Even the educated and not-so educated share in same mentality, same ‘vision’.

If the teeming youth population, the young and not-so young would not deny themselves comfort and sacrifice their time to get their permanent voter cards (PVCs) and actually vote (even if for once in their life for majority of them), then it’s no use raising the hope of ‘taking back the fatherland’ from old guards who have made the country a banana Republic, a living hell. If so, then these supporters should, in the word of the owners of the land, “tone it down.”

In the Igbo world, a well-behaved child is everyone’s child. A plea to supporters and traducers alike would be to allow the Igbo to bask in the sun that there’s, at least, one among them whose integrity towers above his contemporaries and indeed above their haters and oppressors.

There’s none better qualified and equipped to lead Nigeria, to draw Nigeria from the precipice at this point in history than PGO. Therefore, if he fails (or ‘rigged out’) in February 2023 it would not be because of lack of trying; it would be because the oppressed love their oppressors. The Stockholm syndrome!

Udeagwu writes from Abuja