By Achike Chude
Going through the reflection of Fred Nwabufo on Peter Obi’s ‘accidental presidential’ bid was an exercise in literary ribaldry – a journey into a mind programmed by atavistic calculations.
When you see and read a piece crafted in guile and motivated by parochial sensibilities, you will know.
When as a writer, you are compelled by ill motivation to seek to arrive at a certain predetermined end in your literary engagement, then you know that the dark art of intellectual sophism and Machiavellian determinism must form the basis on which your flawed premises and conclusions must be anchored.
At such moments, despite your best attempts at intellectual obfuscation and literary piety, what is known is known – that you are only pandering to a long established hierarchy and structure of primitive accumulators of our national patrimony. You are an attack dog, under the bondage of the master’s whistle.
Reading through Nwabufo’s attack on Peter Obi, you cannot help but come away with the feeling that the write-up is part of a trajectory of attacks that have continuously trailed Peter Obi since his declaration of presidential ambition under the Labour Party. It is another attack borne out of fear that if he is not stopped in his track, the inevitable might happen to redefine Nigeria’s political firmament. It is a fear of the Ruto factor in present day Nigerian politics.
For a man who was very adamant in his wholesale support of Isa Pantami, minister of digital economy, over his dangerous past religious fundamentalist proclivities, one of which led to the mob murder of a student of the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi, Nwabufo’s ever subtle ethnic dig and onslaught against the south east is well noted. His attempt to tie Peter Obi to an ethnic predilection or tendency is also a point of reference.
Sadly, in all of his diatribe against Peter Obi, he failed to explain why a vast majority of Nigerians have defied Nigeria’s notorious fault lines of religion, ethnicity, and geo-politics to embrace a man from across the Niger as someone who encapsulates their vision of a country that has the capacity to change and move away from an inglorious past and a hopeless present into a future full of hope and optimism.
Nwabufo does not see in this historic and unprecedented pan-Nigerian shift in the public mood of Nigerians across all works of life, the beginnings of new things – a new way of thinking that places emphasis on the virtues of character, integrity, and meaningful achievements as the basis for considering people for higher political office rather than recourse to ethnic cleavages and religious motivations.
Instead, Nwabufo says that the true test of a man who is ready to run for office is dependent on the longevity of his political ambitions. In his words:
“Running for president takes intention; it takes years of planning; building a network of people and structures.”
Surely we have seen the consequences of the man who ran for president three times in Nigeria, failing on all occasions, only to achieve his presidential ambition at the fourth time of asking. We are today witnesses of the result of that long held ambition in today’s Nigeria. Everything is in pieces – all because of the “years of planning; building a network of people and structures” – the structure of corruption.
This is what the writer truly means when he talks about structures, because the usual outcomes of the consequences of these structures in Nigeria, following electoral victories have ended up pushing our country into the labyrinth and cesspool of hopelessness and want.
To declare so authoritatively that Peter Obi is not in this election to win, flies against every verifiable evidence. The PDP and the APC certainly do not believe Fred Nwabufo’s assertion. It is the reason why they are spending sleepless nights planning and concocting plans to pull Obi down.
The hard work and efforts that Obi has put into selling his candidacy in every nook and cranny of Nigeria do not bear testimony to such a declaration by Nwabufo. Certainly, Obi is the most hardworking of the candidates, especially those from the dominant political parties. He is up there and he is down here and everywhere else. How else do you define seriousness and commitment to a project?
But of utmost importance is his totally pan-Nigerian outlook and the pan-Nigerian response from Nigerians north and south, young and old in embrace of his Nigerianness. To tie him to anything else is mischief born of malice and disregard for truth by a group of small people with small minds who believe that Nigeria should remain the same under the ‘organized chaos’ they have created to continue to rape and pillage our beloved Nigeria. It is a product of fear – fear that we might have a Kenya in our hands if they don’t stop Peter Obi. People like Fred Nwabufo are the executors of that mandate.
As for manifestoes, as important as they are, at least to provide a glimpse into the inner workings of candidates, in general terms they are useless in bringing about transformation in the absence of a committed, informed, and patriotic political class and an electorate that is ready to put them in check. After all, both the PDP and APC also had their manifestoes and we have seen the almost irretrievable chaos they have plunged Nigeria into.
Regardless of who wins the presidency of this country come 2023, the monumental damage suffered by our country for 23 years under the carelessly dangerous PDP, and the consciously dangerous APC will give any serious political leadership the jitters.
