Peter Obi
BY KEN UGBECHIE
Gradually but steadily, Peter Obi is re-enacting a French political revolution. Not the revolution deep in history. The decade-long revolution of May 5, 1789 to November 9, 1799 that ended the tyranny of monarchy and the reign of the bourgeoisie. Not that one.
Obi is re-creating a recent French revolution. The revolution of Emmanuel Macron, a revolution as recent as 2017. Macron, an investment banker with relatively short political experience, shocked the two major political parties – The Socialists and the Republicans – to win the Presidential election on May 7, 2017 with 66.1 percent of votes cast. He trounced Marine Le Pen to become the youngest French president in history at 39. The magic of Macron victory was simple. He came with an anti-establishment message. He connected with the people with his message of hope, economic revamp and better deal for workers.
Having been part of government, he knew the fault lines, the red flags and sags on the economic dashboard. He understood the disenchantment of the people and assuaged their fears with his message. Against odds, he won. He even got re-elected in April, 2022 for another five years, amid abrasive losses in parliament. Dealt a heavy blow by a coalition of the far right and the left alliance, the losses mean that Macron will not enjoy majority vote in parliament. But he’s Macron, the whizz. He will plot his way out of the bind.
But give it to him, Macron has made history. He has also redefined politics and political permutations. Plus, he has added more wind to the sail of other politicians from supposedly smaller parties in other lands. A silhouette of the Macron magic is beginning to appear on the Nigerian political horizon. Peter Obi quietly slipped off the fingers of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He berthed at a far less popular Labour Party. But he has made the party popular in so short a time.
Peter Obi came with an anti-establishment message just like Macron. Nigerians have been abused, used and rendered disused. Thrashed and discarded by the ruling class, the people choke under heavy yokes. They choke in their pockets. Unemployment and under-employment have coalesced to rob them of pleasure and mirth. Truly, Nigerians have been choking. The military did little to birth succour. Democracy, once thought to be the elixir for the national debility, has instead added to the pain threshold. Two political parties, the PDP and the All Progressives Congress, APC, have dominated the leadership space in the past 23 years. But beyond political parties, it’s the same set of politicians that have held sway. Same persons, different parties; sometimes, same persons in the same party, for too long. Nigerians had likened the 16 years of PDP to hell on earth. But that’s because they hadn’t the gift of clairvoyance to see that the real hell wasn’t far-flung.
The people didn’t have to wait for long as President Muhammadu Buhari has in the past seven years recreated a special variant of hell in Nigeria. The haul of problems in the Buhari era is enough to make him resign, apologise to Nigerians, quit politics and retire to his Daura home.
While Buhari and the APC have made Nigeria a living hell, the people, long suffering and sufficiently angry, are pushing back. The Nigerian situation mirrors perfectly the insufferable conditions that animals were subjected to in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. In that epic novel, the animals somehow found their own voice, discovered their inner strength and with proper guidance and rousing by Old Major, the prized middle white boar, they went into a frenzy of revolution which kicked the tyrant human element (Mr. Jones) out of the farm. At this point, a majority of Nigerians, long subjected to pain, have found a voice in Peter Obi. Just as Old Major in Orwell’s Animal Farm connected with the animals with his revolutionary speech, Peter Obi has aggregated a resonance of positive vibes with the people.
An excerpt from Old Major’s speech reads: “Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short … no animal in England knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. No animal in England is free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.”
The same can be said of the life of Nigerians in the hands of their leaders: “Miserable, laborious, and short.” To the animals and particularly to Old Major, Man is at the core of the hardship of the animals in the midst of plenty. In the Nigerian context, the people see that ‘Man’ in the elite that have occupied the leadership space these past decades. The people want a change. They want to install their own government. In Peter Obi, they are hearing a fresh message, a message of hope, a message that says no more will a cabal or a few steal the harvest of the land. The people, and only the people, will enjoy the fruits of their labour. In other words, the fruitful fields of Nigeria – from Mambilla to the lagoons of Lagos and spreading all over the farmlands, mineral deposits, fish ponds across the nation – shall be for all Nigerians; not for a few merchants of stolen goods.
In the last couple of weeks, I have undertaken several trips to the north, south east and south-south of the country. The message is the same: Nigerians, young and old, are tired of the old order. The case is made worse by the incompetence and gross failure of Buhari; a man who promised so much but delivered zilch.
Some have argued that Obi has no structure. But the counterpoise from the streets and the voting publics is that the masses and all those frozen out from the system by the bourgeoisie constitute the structure. These people are in their millions. They are angry and they hunger for a change. That was how Emmanuel Macron was mocked at by the two establishment parties in France. He was a third force, a voice from the streets who was ignored, even pooh-poohed. Yet, he breasted the tape against odds. It’s the same circumstance here: Ignore Peter Obi at your own peril.
The inconvenient truth is that, win or lose, Peter Obi has through his message and through Nigerians set a high standard of governance code for the next Nigerian President. Whether it’s Atiku Abubakar (PDP), Bola Tinubu (APC), Peter Obi (Labour Party) or any other candidate, the next Nigerian president must subscribe to this governance code that seeks the common good for the people of Nigeria; that emphasizes productivity over primordial consumerism; that says, cut the wastes, block the leakages, consume what you produce, entrench merit over mediocrity, save for winter while it’s still summer, invest in people, create wealth by creating jobs, build factories and infrastructure.
A governance code that rewards virtue and punishes corruption. The moment is now. The momentum is on and there appears no stopping this movement which truly, in all its purity, defines who the real Nigerians are: a people endowed with the best human attributes and blessed with unquantifiable natural wealth.
