The Igbo, Peter Obi and 2023

By Segun Ayobolu On Aug 13, 2022


 

GIVEN the strong feelings evoked in the South-East by the perceived imperative of a President of Igbo extraction succeeding President Muhmmadu Buhari in 2023, it is understandable that the presidential aspiration of Mr. Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), has gained considerable traction particularly among youths in

But then, the demand in some quarters that the presidency ought by right to be conceded to the South-East in 2023 is of little practical import in a multi-party liberal democratic system like ours, which provides that stipulated political offices including the presidency be competed for and winners emerge on the basis of numerical electoral majorities and in compliance with required territorial spread of substantial support.
Obi is often eloquent although his statistics are often inaccurate. He can be entertaining in his presentations even when his policy enunciations lack concreteness. In my view, there is nothing remarkable about his eight- year tenure as governor of Anambra State beyond his claims as regards the humongous amounts he left in the state’s coffers for his predecessor; claims vigorously disputed by the latter, to inspire any great excitement about the developmental prospects of his presidency. But the most serious burden of his aspiration in my view is the way that the Igbo have appropriated his candidacy and the often contemptuous and virulently abusive and insulting disposition of his essentially Igbo ethnic support base on social media towards other candidates and anyone who exercises his or her fundamental right to oppose Obi. Yet, he ought to do more in my view to help control and productively channel the emotions and actions of his supporters on social media especially if the young people in question truly believe in his leadership. Those who see nothing wrong in routinely deriding other candidates as ‘Tinubu’, ‘Jagabandit’ or ‘Atikulooter’, for example, suddenly erupt in anger when a writer takes legitimate literary license with Obi’s name.

For instance, on Thursday, The Guardian online published a threat by an Igbo youth group, the Coalition of South East Youth Leaders (COSEYL), that Tinubu’s campaign posters, billboards or other election materials must not be sighted anywhere in the South-East and that a task force had been set up to enforce the order and punish violators. It is not impossible that these are the antics of mischief makers but they must not also be dismissed lightly. In addition to the security agencies demonstrating seriously that such threats will be decisively dealt with as they could cause widespread breakdown of law and order that could prove fatal to democracy if supporters of other candidates behave the same way, political leaders must take the lead in showing their followers the example of political decorum and decency. In an electoral system where no ethnic group or region can singlehandedly produce a president without support from others, any candidate who creates the impression that he is out to pursue a sectional agenda and thus cannot be trusted by people outside his ethnic enclave is doomed to electoral disaster.
Another example is a poster that has gone viral on social media featuring pictures of Peter Obi and his vice presidential candidate, Yusuf Baba-Ahmed, who are purportedly billed to address the supposed anniversary rally of the #endSARS protests at the Lekki Toll Gate, Lagos, on October 1. If such a plan indeed exists, it is a recipe for predictable violence and bloodshed given the current ethnically-charged political atmosphere created by the exuberance of the ‘Obidient’ crowd notably in Lagos. The #end SARS protests were organized as a nationwide activity against human rights abuses by the disbanded Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) but in Lagos took a particularly destructive partisan and ethnic turn with loss of lives and property worth over N2 trillion destroyed. To attempt to link Obi’s LP in this way with the #endSARS incident in Lagos will reinforce the impression that the massive destruction in the state and the reckless allegations of massacre at the Toll Plaza without credible proof till date were motivated by cynical ethnic and political calculations that are now coming to light.
https://thenationonlineng.net/the-igbo-peter-obi-and-2023/

Abeg. APC have failed, and Tinubu is in APC. Vote them out.

If tinubu does not want to be associated with the failure of APC, he should have joined another party.

How can u stand on the mandate of someone who cant stand for himself.

Another obituary article, from the usual suspects