Early in his presidential campaign, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, former Governor Peter Obi, had a ready answer for those who accused his campaign organization of lacking structure. By structure is meant the existence of campaign offices and an army of supporters in the 774 Local Government Areas of the country, which Obi’s campaign completely lacked at the beginning. Additionally, his political party currently has no siting Governor and less than 10 Members in the National Assembly, who could assist him in mobilising possible voters. Obi’s response at that time was simple: People are my structure, he claimed.
The truth is that the lack of structure helped Obi in two ways: One, he was able to secure the ticket of the Labour Party without a traditional primary election battle immediately after dumping the Peoples Democratic Party, which fielded him as Vice President in the 2019 presidential election. Two, while the major parties were enmeshed internal squabbles during and following the primaries, Obi had free rein in the dying Labour Party and was able to immediately start off his campaign.
He quickly galvanized the youths into the Obidient movement, using social media influencers and IT specialists, by reeling out statistics upon statistics, both true and false ones, and pointing out what is wrong with the country. He keeps telling the youths what they wanted to hear: I will make Nigeria change from consumption to production; generate so much megawatts of electricity per year; invest in education and health; create employment, and so on. Look at my record. I did it in Anambra state (although the present Governor of the State, Chukwuma Soludo, contested Obi’s claims).
As the campaign progressed, Obi kept redefining the constituencies of his structure. They now include the 100 million people living below the poverty line, the 35 million unemployed youths, those who spend all their earnings on feeding alone, and Almighty God.
But that’s not the only reason some youths are following Obi. To be sure, they are frustrated with the status quo; but Obi has ignited the fire of their emotion by convincing them that it is going to be the same status quo in 2023, if they vote for any of the establishment candidates in APC, PDP, and NNPP. That’s enough arrow in the hands of his followers to throw at the establishment candidates.
In no time, his followers took to social media, especially Twitter and Tiktok, to launch a campaign of disinformation and distortions, targeting the establishment candidates, especially the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, whom they fear is the frontrunner. They falsely claimed that Rabiu Kwankwanso, the candidate of the NNPP, had accepted to be Vice-President to Obi. They mischievously developed a collage of photos, with Atiku Abubakar, the candidate of the PDP, eating with some poverty-stricken members of society, while Obi is giving out laptops to school children in the same photo collage.
They reserved the most ridiculous caricature for Tinubu. In one case, Tinubu’s head is put on the body of a cart pusher with Obi’s picture boldly plastered on the cart. What is worse, they revel in false allegations against Tinubu and falsify the mega size of his campaign rallies by posting false images of scanty gatherings somewhere else. The whole idea is to paint a messianic picture of Obi as the nation’s saviour and most popular presidential candiate.
Obi himself has continued to fuel this image. For example, he gave the impression that he went to Egypt to understudy their stable power supply and educational system so he could use the knowledge to improve power supply and the educational system in Nigeria. Thanks to investigative journalism, led by Sahara Reporters, it turned out that Obi lied to the Obidients and other would-be voters about his mission. He actually went to Egypt to attend the Africa Export-Import Bank conference held in that country.
It will be recalled that Obi was a businessman and banker, having been Chairman of two banks before he ventured into politics. He amassed so much wealth in his business dealings that he was able to keep funds in offshore accounts, without disclosing them when he became Governor (see PANDORA PAPERS: Inside Peter Obi’s secret businesses-and how he broke the law, Premium Times, October 4, 2021). Since the accounts were maintained during his governorship, it is unclear how much of Anambra funds went into them.
He recently turned the whole idea of structure on its head by suggesting that he wants to change the structure of the political system, the structure of corruption, the structure of poor governance, and so on. He even promised to declare war on electricity supply. How he wants to achieve these changes is never stated but his supporters have been eating his words and swallowing them.
The fact cannot be denied that Obi’s candidacy has galvanized some youths to take elections seriously. It also cannot be denied that there are also other youths who have been put off by the shenanigans of the Obi campaign and decided to register or collect their PVCs in order to vote for other candidates. Be that as it may, Obi’s decision to target the youths is very strategic. Over 30 million of them registered to vote. It is not clear at the end of the day how many of them will collect their PVCs and how many will eventually vote. Nevertheless, any candidate who neglects the youths in this and subsequent election cycles does so at his or her own peril.
Nevertheless, one thing is clear: Given the intoxication of his supporters by Obi’s rhetoric of change and youth empowerment, security agents must be on the alert when the election results are released, if they do not favour Obi. Afer all, the fanaticism of the Obidients is another variety of the fanaticism of the supporters of former US President Donald Trump and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who became riotous after their principals lost the election.
However, before that happens, the Obidients must be told that, like America’s Donal Trump, Obi is only riding on their back to his political goal. Besides, Obi is a political prostitute, who sleeps with one party today and another tomorrow. Having reached the ceiling in APGA as a two-term Governor, he moved to the PDP, where he was a Vice-Presidential nominee in 2019. Sensing that he could not win the presidential nomination in 2022, he moved to the LP where he negotiated the presidential ticket.
Niyi Akinnaso
