My Yoruba readers must not retreat into old essentialism that sees Ndigbo as tribal enemies. The old finger wagging, the binary oppositions and crude online vulgarities rooted in hate must collapse. Peter Obi is an epochal disrupter ordained to redirect the course of our history.
By Taju Tijani
Consider this brief thought experiment: your beloved country is ravaged by murderous insecurity. The nation you love and adore is overrun by pandemic looting. It is seized by internal political enemies. The corruption is ageing ever more ungraciously. You become a powerless, humiliated citizen of a failed state. What would you do in this situation? What would any thinking person do? Keep your head down? Or react and find a way of resisting and finding alternative paradigm? The above scenario is what is becoming the norm in Nigeria. Today, Peter Obi is out to redraw and question that orthodoxy.
Recently, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) political enablers banished Mr. Peter Obi into an undeserved political wilderness to nurse his disappointment, humiliation, and regret. Obi has taken the political perfidy like a courageous statesman, demonstrating high integrity while the madness inside the PDP primary lasted. Obi’s radical swing of political pendulum away from the PDP and his determination to fix Nigeria is gaining traction among detribalised and thinking Nigerians. With Obi, patriotic and discerning Nigerians are inhaling a fresh air of hope from the structural malfunction of our monetised or dollar-fuelled democracy.
The birth of a third force as a movement of nascent determination especially among the youths to forge strong solidarity and work against the dialectic of political disasters foisted on Nigerians through the PDP/APC bloodline is encouraging. It is animating the polity and making us wonder if Peter Obi is the man who will enable us to regain our paradise.
Students, market women, Facebook foot soldiers, restless WhatsAppers, studio analysts, newsroom talking heads, digital activists, keyboard warriors, YouTubers, Vloggers, TikTokers and generational influencers are weaving stories of resilience, audacious belief and visionary certainty that anchors all hope on Obi’s presidential victory come 2023! Labour Party is gaining barbarian strength through Peter Obi. Hurray!!!!
Obi’s rise to national political superstardom is enervating, intoxicating, timely and necessary. It is hallucinatory and the answer to our urgent search for a redeemer. Obi is the common-sense political alternative to our complex amalgam of elite gang up, rage, dread, hysteria, corruption, and Fulani domination that continues to frustrate and deny the existence and aspirations of other Nigerians.
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Muhammadu Buhari has turned Nigeria into a Fulani time bomb. He has degraded our democracy. Nigeria is prostrate, insecure, impoverished and divided along tribal lines more than any time in our history. Buhari postponed our paradise through the ugliness of insecurity, cluelessness, incompetence, corruption, and Fulani clannishness.
The sense of historical destiny of Peter Obi started in Anambra State where evidence and facts suggested that he was an able administrator and a good manager of resources. Obi, going by the voices of Ndigbo, is a good egg, a visionary, and a true servant of the people when he was in power as the state governor. He never lived an insulated life from the privations of Anambrarians. Rather, he dirtied his hands through leadership humility, accessibility, and buddy pragmatism.
Obi is not your universal politician. His avowed critics gush about his aversion to corruption and elite stealing. Obi has always stood as a bulwark against the offensive decay of decency and aberrations of the ruling class. Where many avaricious politicians have subverted the principles of leadership accountability, Obi remains our last hope of transparency and political rectitude. Obi is the real McCoy, the authentic hero of the moment who is sending shivers to the spines of those rent seeking politicians whose vision is limited to short term gain of corruption, commonwealth profligacy and the furtherance of democratic impunity and rascality. Today, Peter Obi is facing down a titanic clash of convictions: teaming with the tiny blood sucking elites or acceding to the genuine desire of long-suffering Nigerians.
We all agreed that Nigeria is at a crossroads. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and All Progressives Congress (APC) have both ruined the corporate existence of Nigeria. Majority of these political actors are rogues, charlatans, and enablers of profligate monoculture cruelly suited to the Abuja ecosystem of high corruption. Buhari’s administration is dysfunctional, incompetent and a conduit for Fulani resource cleansing of embarrassing nature. His utopian 2015 pledges have turned into ashes. His seeming grubby compromises with Fulani terrorists and bandits amount to treasonable crime.
With Peter Obi Nigeria has reached the red pilling stage – an awakening!!! 2023 election is a defining moment for all Nigerians secretly pushing for a radical change. The recalibration of interest in Obi’s presidency is encouraging a resurrection from voting apathy among the masses who have given up hope of seeing a catalysing agent like Obi to accelerate a new order. Nigeria’s old narrative of tribulation, tragedy and travail must stop. What is growing is a countervailing impulse toward convergence of Hausa/Igbo/Yoruba unity behind Obi. The protean personality of Peter Obi is encouraging many thinking young Yoruba voters to believe in him.
My Yoruba readers must not retreat into old essentialism that sees Ndigbo as tribal enemies. The old finger wagging, the binary oppositions and crude online vulgarities rooted in hate must collapse. Obi is an epochal disrupter ordained to redirect the course of our history. Our vision for a fair, progressive and prosperous Nigeria rooted in social progress and economic might must bypass the existing frame of tribal antagonism between Ndigbo and Yoruba.
Abubakar Atiku and Bola Tinubu are predatory carnivores who recently deployed the vicious efficiency of money to buy their presidential ambitions. The full monetised lunacy of the past months is enough pointer to a dark and doleful future if ever we submit our sovereignty to these merciless political vermins whose sole agenda is to arrest the paradise Peter Obi is out to regain for us all. Would all Obi-dients stand up and be counted?