By Ike Abonyi
“ There is no such thing as helplessness. It’s just another word for giving up ”-Jefferson Smith.
Let me disappoint us today for our prioritizing sleep where and when we should be awakened. In 2027 Peter Obi may not be President as many of us desire. Why? Because Nigerians seem to have given up that if you don’t have power and money to buy your way fraudulently you cannot be President in this country. That’s why you hear things like Tinubu is not Jonathan. Tinubu represents the political gangsters who know how to grab and run and Jonathan represents the civility who wants to follow the rules. Peter Obi is more of Jonathan’s school and he wants to challenge Tinubu with a docile, complacent, and lamblike population, what do you expect?. Tinubu’s group is busy investing in him, Obi’s team is waiting for Tinubu’s group to invest in them as well.
This demoralizing opening remarks to this week’s conversation will let us know the truth and brace up for it. Why because we are all guilty of duplicitous living, of eating our baked cake and still looking for it, of working in JohnHolt and going to Nestle for our salary. In our political life in this country, we fancy a good omelette without an egg, its essential ingredient. Virtually everyone you meet in this country today, including some ruling party members, desires a Peter Obi Presidency for a change away from the unprogressive and humdrum governance system in the country over the years. But how many are ready and willing to invest in it, to stake their time and resources to ensure it’s realized?
Investing in good governance starts by getting your PVC and subscribing to a proper electoral system that ensures that the leadership recruitment process is perfect. If you feel rightly that the elites in this country are cheating the poor, have you bothered to know that it’s the same poor that these elites use to do it?
If the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and his National Commissioners and Resident Commissioners who are not up to 100 are elites, they will not be at the polling booths and collation centers scattered in over a thousand locations across 774 local Government areas in the country. It’s the non-elites that will be mobilised to attack themselves and rig the election not for themselves but for their oppressors. The Inspector General of Police and his Commissioners, as elites, will not man the polling unit; it’s the other ranks who are complaining about misrule in the Police and the country who will see the opportunity to do good for their interests, but instead choose to serve their subjugator. It has never been recorded in any election circles in this country that the so-called political elites carried a ballot box, it’s the same downtrodden that does the ignoble act for them.
The title for this week’s conversation was generated from a 70-year-old Nigerian man’s discussion with a friend who shared it with me knowing that I am an ardent believer that a New Nigeria is Possible through Peter Obi. Even though I long knew that dismantling the criminal gangs holding power in Nigeria is not going to be easy, the simplistic way the old man dissected the situation has left me thinking. His intriguing analysis came in the form of a question. “If Peter Obi becomes President and puts this country right, what happens to the large number of powerful persons who are benefiting in Nigeria not being right and are not used to any other way of life? Who cares, is likely to be the quick response of many. Others will say let them go and enjoy what they already looted. But it’s not as easy as that telling a sucking baby to remove his mouth from the mother’s breast even if the mother is tired and needs a break. The mother just has to do one thing to extricate herself from the selfish baby using the varying methods available to her.
According to the old man, these people have invested heavily in Nigeria being as it is, and even getting worse and you think they will just watch you keep them out of job? These people have invested much and are ready to put more to defend their investment but how many of your people are ready to defend their position? On the scale of commitment and performance, the people who want Nigeria to remain in its comatose state are more than those who want a new better country. Yes, those who want a new Nigeria are more in number but how committed and useful is their number?
Everyone knows that Peter Obi by his antecedents will fix Nigeria if given the chance but how many of those who want Nigeria fixed are ready to invest their time, money and knowledge in him? We all know and agree that Tinubu is destroying the country with his anti-people and nepotistic governance style but many are still investing in him. They are grumbling yet decamping to his platform but none is going to Obi’s platform instead they are leaving him. They only praise and urge him on in their mind but do nothing to facilitate it.
The truth which may sound odd and painful is that those who want Nigeria destroyed or remain as it is are more committed than those who desire a change. The destroyers are more determined and unwavering in their drive than the builders. For now, that is the bitter truth as painful as it is, and may remain so for long because the signs are not showing any desire for a real change.
Have you not heard the saying about Nigeria that those on the line to steal from the public treasury are more in number than those who have already stolen and those currently stealing? That statement is a fact about Nigeria. You think those large numbers on the line to steal will allow Peter Obi to come and block them?
‘Because you people are underrating the intensity of corruption in Nigeria that is why you think that a Peter Obi will just be allowed to walk in to put things right while they watch him. How and where would that happen?’, the old man concluded
As provocative as the above submission might sound but that’s the reality. The critical players who contributed to the hocus pocus of 2023, Nasir El Rufai, and Rotimi Amaechi, Governor and Minister respectively in the APC regime of late Muhammadu Buhari, have just confirmed that Peter Obi, the standard-bearer of the Labour Party, actually won the Presidential election. But those who allocated the 6 million to him and 8 million to Tinubu were the elites, and those who danced in support of the fraud were the poor. Two of them the poor and the elites meet in churches and mosques and call on God to save this land while none of them is doing what they were supposed to do to save the land. The poor are manuring the sown evil while the elites are harvesting it.
Nigeria’s political predicament is like a cab driver who makes some illicit money by hiring a battery for his everyday job and discourages the cab owner from buying a new battery.
If the cab owner either due to indifference or a busy Schedule with other mundane things far less important and fails to look into his cab business, the driver will continue to milk the business to death. In this instance, the cab owner is the Nigerian people who have woefully failed to look into their political predicaments but go on grumbling but unable to act.
Peter Obi may have played his part by presenting himself and ensuring that he remained relevant in the public space. To put himself in the public space for over a decade since leaving office as Governor in 2014 is certainly a huge financial and emotional drain. To remain standing amid the barrage of attack dogs deployed at home and abroad ostensibly to harm him is no mean achievement.
Peter Obi has almost drowned and crushed the hydra-headed Nigerian negative politics with its complex and multifaceted nature and made himself now a candidate of the people for a new Nigeria. He is today not mirrored as an Igbo or a Christian, a northern or Southern candidate but as the man destined to create a new Nigeria of our dream. He did all these clutching to his enviable antecedents that are apparent and verifiable. Obi has changed the narrative that 2027 is between the Nigerian people and APC/Tinubu and not between any political party.
If the poor that he is fronting for, if the downtrodden that he is standing out for, if the deprived in our midst that he is crusading for can stand up and do their beat, the story will be different in 2027.
So, if by 2027 President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is still in the office, we should look at ourselves and point the blame not on anybody because for Obi he has done his beat, if we do our own a better Nigeria is achievable not even in four years but within one year the foundation would have been laid and we all will see it. If you are waiting for the elites to unite against one of their own Tinubu irrespective of their party affiliations, you may wait indefinitely. Your destiny is in your hands.
Let us therefore stop looking for help from outside because the thing we are looking for in Sokoto is right there in our shokotoo.
America, Britain, European Union name them cannot help a meek, unresisting, and decadent youth population that are fierce attack dogs in social media but toothless when their physical efforts are needed.
It has become necessary to highlight these perspectives to our challenges so that we can stop pointing accusing fingers in the wrong direction. Tinubu, APC, Mahmoud Yakubu of INEC, Nigerian Police, DSS, name all agents of state actors , who are our creation. They didn’t come from the moon. So, long as we the suffering masses have chosen to be smug and contented in shit eating so long will the selfish minority elites continue to exploit us and hold on in the mismanagement of our commonwealth.
The man who is a failure is the man who has encountered many defeats and ended up defeated. Defeatism is not an option for growth but struggle is the precondition for growth. That is why Napoleon Hill reminds us that “ strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle” It doesn’t come from the mentality of joining them if you can’t beat them but on continuing because aluta never stops it continues. The 2027 battle is going to be between an oppressor class and the oppressed class. God help us.
