Peter Obi

By Mubarak Shu’aib

Ask most people why countries break apart, and many will say that different groups sharing a single country naturally dislike and distrust one another. For example, Yugoslavia fragmented because the Serbs and Croats and then the Bosnian Muslims started to fight each other after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ethiopia recently descended into civil war because its various ethnic groups – the Tigrayans, Amharans, and those from the Sidama region- each wanted government control. So fundamental ethnic and religious differences must be the cause of all these conflicts.

Nigerians have a lot at stake in answer to this question. Our country has become increasingly divided, with ethnicity now playing a central role in debates over where the presidency should go come 2023. Could the country travail through these adversaries and polarisations?

It turns out that the differences themselves do not lead to violence. This is the finding of political scientists who have studied hundreds of ethnic conflicts worldwide. Almost all countries are multi-ethnic and religious, yet few experience crises.

For a society to fracture along identity lines, you need mouthpieces – influential people willing to make discriminatory appeals and pursue discriminatory policies in the name of a particular group. They provoke and harness feelings of fear as a way to lock in an ethnic constituency that will support their scramble power. These mouthpieces are often politicians seeking to gain or maintain control. Still, they can also include business elites (seeking brand loyalty), religious leaders (seeking to expand their followers), and media figures (seeking to grow their audience). 

Separate and hostile ethnic identities don’t exist in a vacuum; they need to be crafted, and these individuals rise to do just that. They’re often at a high risk of losing power or have recently lost it. Seeing another route to securing their futures, they cynically exploit divisions to try to reassert control. We see such figures on our social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook etc.). And they’re more dangerous than what we’ve been led to believe.  Experts have a term for these instigators of conflict: ethnic entrepreneurs.

The term was first used in the 1990s in Yugoslavia, but ethnic entrepreneurs have emerged many times over in all parts of the world. Though the catalyst for conflict is often ostensibly something else – the economy, freedom of religion – ethnic entrepreneurs make the fight expressly about their position and status in society. Harnessing the power of media, they work to convince citizens that they are under threat from an out-group and must band together under the entrepreneur to counter the threat. They also try to persuade those in their group, often with incendiary language, that they are superior and “deserve” to dominate. They (ethnic entrepreneurs), at rallies, symposia, places of worship and town hall meetings, cast aspersions on some ethnic and religious groups.

So why do average Nigerians let themselves be swept along this rhetoric? Perhaps surprisingly, they are often clear-eyed about ethnic entrepreneurs. They know these individuals have their agenda and are not telling the whole truth. Many Igbos did not trust, let alone love, Peter Obi, who was a running mate to Atiku Abubakar a few years earlier (2019). But they’re now willing to show support after a mounting threat to their lives, livelihoods, families, or futures. Over time, the OBidients’ rhetorics and increasing ethnic biases steadily sowed doubts. After silencing the disloyal journalists and media outlets, they plied their audiences with unrelenting messages of fear and suspicion.

These ethnic entrepreneurs are now thriving. But they emerged out of nowhere. In fact,  from the #EndSARS protesters, some of these ethnic entrepreneurs have metamorphosis into #OBIdients. Unfortunately, Mr Obi is relying on their appeals to win the presidency. Albeit with a coded language.

Religion is next. To secure the support of Evangelical leaders and their increasingly mobilised voters, the ObIdients stake more and more pro-life positions. Moral imperatives and cultural identities are now, more than ever, driving voting patterns. 

From appealing to core policy concerns and stoking anxiety where it’s not required, these ethnic entrepreneurs are using different tools to upset the country’s political atmosphere. 

They rightly do so by exacerbating issues on social media. Deborah’s murder is a case study. Twitter exploded, Facebook went mainstream, and social media became an ever-present part of our lives.

Critically, a network of these gleeful ethnic entrepreneurs realised that they could gain ratings and influence by emphasising online tension. As a result, media titans such as SAHARA Reporters, who rely on ratings and clicks, feed us increasingly polarised content.

Into this political morass stepped in Peter Obi. In his bid for power, he realised that appeals to identity could galvanise his political base.  So now, he embraced identity politics explicitly and with gusto.

Obi intuitively understood that the deep feeling of alienation among many Igbo voters could carry him to power.  Although he’s too clever to factor much into the division like other ethnic entrepreneurs, he resorted to radicalising the previous administrations he’s part of as a two-time governor of Anambra State.

Although he remained an underdog in the race, his movement is a future incentive for other ethnic entrepreneurs who are now studying his playbook and will, without a doubt, use it to try to catapult themselves into the Villa in the nearest future. They will build on the momentum, and they will do so by manufacturing threats, fomenting even more ethnic fear, and convincing Igbos that they genuinely are in the midst of an existential fight. How far will these ethnic entrepreneurs go? How far will we let them?

Mubarak Shu’aib writes from Hardawa, Misau LGA, Bauchi State, via naisabur83@gmail.com.

By Ambali Abdulkabeer

I understand Dino Melaye is a serial political clown who doesn’t deserve much attention. Yet there’s a need to say a few words about his recent cringe-worthy video targeted at Peter Obi.

In the viral video, Dino argued that Nigeria’s problem is beyond cutting governance costs. He said that with all confidence. Ignorant.

Nigeria is what it is today due to a lack of financial prudence in the political firmament. For instance, a report emerged that President Muhammadu Buhari travelled 11 times in five months. However, if you carefully research the trips facilitated with the country’s hard-earned money, you may discover that not all the trips would demand the President and his needless entourage.

Ahmed Lawan, the President of the Senate, in a lecture titled ‘The Legislature, Legislative Mandate and People – The Reality and the Public Perception’ and presented during the First Distinguished Parliamentarians Lecture Series organised by the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies last year, clarified the salaries of members of the National Assembly.

“The total salary of a member of the Senate is about N1.5m while that of the House of Representatives is about N1.3m.

“The average office running cost for a senator is about N13m while that of a member of the House of Representatives is N8m”, Lawan said in the robust paper.

When calculated, the N13m office running cost for a senator amounts to N52m per annum, while the N8m for a member of the House of Representatives amounts to N32m in a year.

Plus salary, this means that each Senator goes home with 70 million and House of Reps member with 47.6 million annually.

Don’t let us talk about the salaries and allowances of the President, Vice President, Ministers and others. A waste of time!

Then the big question is, how much does a diligent civil servant get annually, or even in his entire 35 years in service? You can answer that!

And don’t forget this country is abysmally run through heavy loans upon loans. So if any country in the world must cut governance costs to attend to its multifarious crises, it should be Nigeria.

There is nothing wrong with Dino canvassing support for Atiku Abubakar. But to say that the only solution now is the unity of Nigeria is problematic. It’s even self-delusion to tip a former vice president as the best man for the job! If we are united (which I think it’s untenable given our slapdash approach to leadership), the country needs people who are genuinely financially prudent to survive. Not these endlessly grasping ‘agbada men’ carting away its resources.

It must also be said that whether or not Peter Obi is manageable for the country at the moment, Nigerians have the liberty to decide in 2023. It would be fair, however, to remind us that our country needs a better future.

The Danish poet and social critic Soren Kierkegaard was right when he said, “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” So while they should embrace the fact that the country needs a genuine president, Nigerians should not be fooled into believing cutting governance costs isn’t a solution.

Ambali Abdulkabeer writes from Ilorin. He can be reached via abdulkabeerambali@gmail.com.

By Hassan Ahmad Usman

To begin, I would like my readers to understand that, unlike games, there is no “cheat code” for good governance. Governance is practical, with little room for derailing if the desired outcome must be achieved. If there is anything that President Buhari-led’s administration taught us, it is to shun unrealistic optimism.  There is nothing wrong with setting standards for our leaders or being optimistic about the prospects of their leadership.  

At the inauguration of Buhari in 2015, one would believe by now that he is rounding off his eight years stay, our four refineries would be functional, the epileptic power supply would be a thing of the past, security tackled, and so many things accomplished. 

Notwithstanding, people overlook many landmark achievements by his administration. Why? Unrealistic optimism. They are not the standards we set for him from the on set. In a year, we’ll have a new president, new administration and new policy makers. In between, we’ll have an election that will bring a new government.

The leading candidates so far are former vice president Atiku Abukar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP),  former Lagos state governor Bola Tinubu of All progressives Congress (APC) and former Anambra state governor Peter Obi of the Labour party (LP). These candidates are enjoying a large support base. 

My candid advice to the “Batists”, “Atikulateds”, and the “OBIdients” is to learn from the travails the Buharists went through in his defence. They marketed Buhari to the extent that we thought only miracles would better his performance in office, and failure was an impossibility in our imaginations.  We again gave him another chance despite his dissatisfaction with his first term because the Saraki/Dogara-led National Assembly was a block to his reform agendas. They also told us that the 2016 economic recession was a catastrophe due to the then-ever-falling oil prices. With these excuses, whether acceptable or not, we should understand that there won’t be a smooth ride for any president in a developing economy like ours.

So, I remind those supporters to moderate their optimism and understand and study what development is all about in modern civilization. It is not as easy as we thought. It would be best if you weren’t in defence of your candidate throughout his stay in office.  

Nigeria had her chance to turn things around when the oil price was at its highest. Unfortunately, indecisions and a lack of foresight from the leaders made it impossible. We are now living to bear the brunts of the indecisions of our past leaders. 

To Nigerians, we should understand that good governance that translates into sustainable growth and development cannot be achieved through “quick-fix” solutions. It’ll take longer than expected time for it to manifest. We’ve read and heard of the turnaround of countries like China and the United Arab Emirates but never paid attention to the processes they passed through before making it to the big stage. If development is what we all crave, we must all make sacrifices that come with it and know that we may not be the immediate beneficiaries of our own strides. 

Hassan Ahmad Usman writes from Lafia, Nasarawa State, Nigeria.  He can be reached via basree177@gmail.com.

By Amir Abdulazeez

When President Obasanjo carelessly picked Goodluck Jonathan to serve as Umaru ‘Yaradua’s potential Vice President in 2007, little did we know that the politics of choosing running mates would later become complex and problematic. The death of Umaru, the ascension of Jonathan, the surprising emergence of Namadi Sambo and Patrick Yakowa becoming the first Christian Civilian Governor of Kaduna State would all combine to later add more relevance to the politics of running mate selection. In 2014, APC had more headaches picking a presidential running mate than the presidential candidate himself. It took them so much time and effort that one thought they would organize a new convention for that purpose.

Today, the Muslim-Muslim ticket debacle is the bane of Nigerian political discourse. While clamouring for fairness and balance, which are needed for a fragile system like Nigeria’s, we should also remember that from 1999 to date, no religion can claim any net gain from this Nigerian version of democracy. Ordinary followers of all faiths have been victims of bad governance, even pagans. We have suffered so much that if a pagan/pagan ticket will eradicate insecurity, fix the economy and bring development while being fair to all interests and affiliations, we should allow it. Therefore, the choice is between searching for solutions and satisfying sentiments; we seem to favour the latter.

A section of public commentators and spectators are already suggesting a walkover for Atiku Abubakar in the 2023 polls. That is the biggest complacency I have ever seen in contemporary Nigerian politics. How can you be facing a ruling party with almost 65% of political stakeholdership in the country and be expecting to have a walkover? Atiku is an institution, but his successes in the last two PDP primaries are more financial supremacy than political dominance. That aside, barring a Buhari-like scenario, Atiku will make a good president. He is perhaps the only fully independent candidate with a clear and accessible blueprint since 2007. In 2011, he had a better manifesto and approach than President Goodluck Jonathan; he only lost the PDP primaries to the power of incumbency. By the way, what happened to the Jonathan 2023 candidacy?

From 1992, this is Atiku’s 7^th attempt at the Presidency, with 2019 being his closest to success. Many believe 2023 is his year, and so many apparent factors call for optimism in his camp. However, two fundamental things may haunt Waziri; (in)consistency and (un)popularity. Buhari and Tinubu are successfully reaping the harvests of consistency and perseverance; they stuck to opposition politics all their lives. Atiku should’ve remained in opposition when he decamped to Action Congress in 2007 or should’ve stayed in the ruling PDP when he decamped back in 2011. Ambition had kept him running from one place to another, making him neither establishment nor anti-establishment. The second question is whether there is a single state in Nigeria in which Atiku can secure one million votes or more in 2023? I hope we all remember Dr Rabi’u Kwankwaso’s 3-K States theory?

Tinubu’s boast in Ogun State over his role in the emergence of Buhari as President needs some revisiting and clarification. To avoid doubt, Muhammadu Buhari did not lose the 2003 presidential elections; it was brutally rigged to return Obasanjo for a second term. 2003 will easily enter the list of the worst elections in modern world history. In 2007, the results of the presidential election were simply written, so we can’t even call that election not to talk of who won or lost. I have never relied on 2003 and 2007 election figures for research or serious analysis because they are primarily fabricated. The 2011 elections were relatively fair, but at least 40% of the vote was rigged, written, or inflated, especially in the South-South and South-East.

In the circumstances like these, we cannot comfortably declare Buhari a loser of all the previous elections he contested and only became a winner when he met Tinubu. Although 2015 was indeed the weakest version of political Buhari, it was confirmed that he had lost hope and that the APC merger spearheaded by Tinubu was what brought him back to life. But it is also true that so many other factors other than Tinubu contributed crucially to Buhari’s victory. One major one was the abysmal performance of Goodluck Jonathan. One, however, is that, without Tinubu’s support, it would’ve been near impossible for Buhari to emerge APC flagbearer against the financial powerhouses in Kwankwaso and Atiku.

This brings us to the argument that access to public funds is why some candidates (not aspirants) are stronger than others. Supporters of a particular presidential candidate even claimed that if their man had equal access to public funds, he would be better than certain candidates. This is laughable; a debate like this will take us nowhere. Just campaign for your candidate and persuade people to vote for him. If we are talking about the abuse of people’s trust and the utilization of our commonwealth for personal political development, none of the prominent politicians in Nigeria will come out clean. So, let us not deceive ourselves and others.

Where are our smaller political parties who had spent most of their last four years fighting INEC over deregistration? This is a reasonable amount of time they would’ve spent coming together to form a strong bloc. In case we don’t know, 74 of them were deregistered for failing to meet the requirements to continue to exist as political parties. About 10 to 15 of the currently existing will be due for deregistration by this time next year. Instead of them to consider merging to form a decent alternative, they’ll rather hang on only to be fighting a legal survival battle with INEC next year. As the strongest and largest intellectual organization in West Africa, I don’t even know why ASUU is yet to form a political party or adopt any of the smaller parties to set up a path towards satisfying their own demands all by themselves instead of waiting and hoping for a hopeless Federal Government.

Why is nobody talking about the enormous task ahead of the next president, whom credible international reports suggest will have to use 100% of his revenue in servicing (not repaying) debts by 2024? To execute projects or even pay salaries, the next government may have to borrow further. Nigeria is in trouble. We are drowning in the ocean of foreign debts. Meanwhile, we are concerned over a presidential candidate’s religion more than his ability to bring us out of this mess. Buhari has failed because Jonathan had built a solid foundation for that failure. Now he has built a worse foundation for his successor. The possibility and danger of the next president, irrespective of his affiliation and preparedness to economically be worse than Buhari, is imminent. May God help us.

All of the political dynamics of today are closely related to 1999, some a bit earlier. Suppose you have not directly experienced Nigerian political development from 1999 with a mix of some pre-1999 historical knowledge. In that case, you will find it difficult, if not impossible, to connect specific dots that you see today. Extensive and intensive reading may help, but politely interacting with veterans will do better. Unfortunately, social media, where most of the political debates occur, is dominated by youths who knew little or nothing pre-2011 and don’t invest significant time in reading but trying to engage or even confront the same veterans that would’ve been their best opportunity at understanding the genesis of the current situation.

There are some visible changes in Nigeria’s socio-political spaces, although not new but have taken a different twist from the previous. The renewed order is the attempt to criminalize certain political choices against others. Between 2014 to 2018, discourses were dominated by hate, campaigns of calumny, fabrications and outright abuse. Today, political promoters are trying hard to make it appear that only their candidates are good enough, and any other choice is treason. This is extremism. Let’s be careful, everything is a matter of opinion, and everyone is entitled to his.

Twitter: @AmirAbdulazeez

By Amir Abdulazeez

The primary elections of the two leading political parties, APC and PDP, had come and gone. However, the dust raised by the exercises across various states of the federation is yet to settle. As things are going, it is unlikely that both parties’ primary election appeal committees will adequately or significantly settle the dust to the extent of amounting to a major change of the status quo. After all, everything was clear; the contests were majorly a measure of financial power.

As usual, our attempts to digest the intrigues and expectations of the upcoming grand 2023 event have once again resulted in endless debates that often lead to more confusion than clarifications. Certain political dynamics cannot be adequately explained by simple analysis or even complex ones. This is truer for cases like Nigeria, where deep insight is considered old-fashioned, authentic information is always scarce, and genuine narratives are always twisted.

Ahead of the just concluded APC Primaries, many accused Yemi Osinbajo of being a traitor and betrayer by contesting against his benefactor Tinubu. However, few people will understand that only one out of a million people will go so close to the presidency as Osinbajo did without succumbing to the temptation of taking a shot at it. The cabal theory notwithstanding, he is perhaps the Nigerian Vice President who was closest to the full privileges of the presidency in recent history. At a time, the Professor himself appeared like the next President in waiting. In sincere terms, Osinbajo may feel that running for the Presidency is more of an attempt to fulfil a destiny than betraying a godfather whose help he may not need any longer.

Maybe, many have forgotten that the Vice President had at a time been an Acting President with virtually full Presidential powers. He is aware of people’s confidence in his competence and knows that many factors are against Tinubu’s candidacy. With the Southwest as the default region where APC will likely have its next candidate, it is only natural he (the second default candidate) tries his luck in case Tinubu (the default candidate) does not get the nod. How can he cash in on a Tinubu collapse if he doesn’t contest? If he hadn’t competed, his promoters would never have forgiven him. Now that he had competed, he knows the extents and limits of his political strengths, which might have been hitherto exaggerated.

Some analysts have accused Tinubu of trying to become President at all costs despite being sick and unstable. We have forgotten that he had, since 1998, invested almost 25 years of his life (and health) trying to reach this point, and we all know he will need an ultimate reward at the end of it all. Now that the prize is within reach, only one out of a million people will back off over health challenges that are yet to prevent him from managing a public appearance. When he made all those sacrifices and concessions, many of us did not bother to understand the larger picture of where he was heading. If not for democracy, one will suggest that the APC ticket should’ve been handed over to him unopposed.

Therefore, Tinubu has fought for long. He has been in the opposition all his life. He has helped build a new political order in Nigeria. Without him, power will still likely be with the PDP and maybe forever. It’s not his making that his health appears to be failing him at this moment of near fulfilment, but as a human, he will continue believing his condition is good enough to manage him to the finish line. The late President Ƴaradua’s situation in 2010 should teach us some lessons, that of Buhari in 2017 too. Tinubu is undoubtedly not the best APC had on offer capacity-wise, but he is the most formidable. His political structure is out of this world. Win or lose, at least they have repaid a significant part of the debt they owe him.

In the build-up to the primaries, we all thought everyone was an enemy of the Southeast since the rest of Nigeria had refused to zone the presidency to the region exclusively. In his speech at the APC convention, Ogbonnaya Onu emotionally shouted for justice against the Igbo marginalization. If not for the APC and PDP Southeast delegates who proved the Igbos’ unpreparedness by refusing to vote for any of their kinsmen, everyone would simply be emotionally blackmailed. Besides, we have all seen how disorganized the Southeast aspirants were across both parties.

From 2003 to 2010, the Southeast was considered a formidable political bloc, but they wasted opportunity after opportunity to consolidate. Instead, they focused on ethnic and religious politics. Conceding the Presidency to the Southwest in 1999 was basically a military arrangement executed against democratic principles. The Southeast demanding the same in a maturing democracy is quite tricky. In this era, no one will gift you the Presidency; you have to earn it.

Another aspirant is NNPP’s Rabi’u Kwankwaso. His critics accuse him of being a local champion. However, his supporters insist on rating him higher than Atiku and Tinubu based on a tangible track record. However, the debate is not as simple as it seems. The same scale cannot be used to measure Tinubu, Kwankwaso and especially Atiku, as their political career paths are distinctively different. The truth is that Kwankwaso is a national figure who has invested too much energy in local politics, which was why he achieved what he has achieved. However, this has come with a price because he has dominated and taken away all the local relevance he could’ve easily allowed his subordinates to coordinate, a feat that would’ve given him a Tinubu-like aura. In the end, he ends up fighting for crumbs with local people, making him unavoidably local.

What of Peter Obi? He appears to have more packaging than substance, but he is yet another litmus test for the Southeast. They feel denied, marginalized and short-changed. Their response should be a massive vote for him. Even if he may not win, they will succeed in sending a strong message ahead of 2027. However, there is a wiser option. They can use Petr Obi as a bargaining tool with someone like Kwankwaso for example; form an alliance, challenge the red-cap man to deliver the Northwest zone while offering Southeast and see whether something will come out of it.

The bottom line is that we don’t need to be too upset or over-obsessed with anybody’s ambition, any region’s miscalculations or any party’s misdirection. There are so many choices in the political landscape that our myopia hinders us from utilizing. For example, if you genuinely want an Igbo president, the Labour Party has fielded Peter Obi. If you want somebody whose hands are not shaking, NNPP has fielded Kwankwaso, etc. So quietly do the needful and urge others to do the same. Give it a try. The strong parties and candidates are only front liners because you and I made them so.

Nigerian public discourse often makes complex political analysis look simple and simple political analysis look complex. And finally, we end up achieving no political analysis at all.

Twitter: @AmirAbdulazeez.