By Paul Obi

” Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe .”

– Frederick Douglas

Times are dire for Africa’s biggest democracy, no doubt. In February, 2023, the country faces a daunting hurdle that will definitely define her either as an elite captured pseudo-failed state or a nation-state with roots of citizen’s paramount interests. It’s a battle between Nigerian ruling elites versus the people. A class struggle sort of – that has all the trappings of a do or die democracy. For a damning sixty-two years, Nigerian ruling elites plundered the state with reckless abandon, enriching themselves, families, cronies, oligarchs and foreigners through illicit siphoning of public funds and deliberate carnage.

Therefore, in the forthcoming Presidential contest, the elites represented by the All Progressives Congress (APC) Bola Ahmed Tinubu and People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Atiku Abubakar are all up in arms against Labour Party (LP) Peter Obi, whose momentous rise has revolutionized even apolitical citizens wanting to take back their country from the ruling elites who have cared less about the wellbeing of the people for so long. Thus, every shades, missiles, attacks, misinformation and propaganda are being targeted at no one, but Peter Obi. Though innocuous, it’s a familiar trajectory in political campaign and electioneering.

In an article published in THISDAY Newspaper on Friday, 12th August, 2022 by one Jesutega Onokpasa, titled “What Is Peter Obi Really Up To?”, the author laboriously attempted to paint LP’s presidential candidate, Obi as an ineffectual presidential wannabe. Onokpasa argued back and forth, while contradicting himself with utmost loss when he alluded that “Peter Obi is qualified to be president but I cannot see how he can become president nor how he can succeed.” He went on to assert that “Peter Obi simply does not know how to work with people and has never been able to assert himself as a political leader.”

The implication of the above quote in the piece by Onokpasa insinuates that Obi is politically ‘impotent’ and that the episodic cases of impeachment that characterized his tenure as the then Governor of Anambra State will be re-enacted if Obi eventually becomes the President. Onokpasa with so much energy attempted to compare and contrast Peter Obi and APC’s presidential candidate, Tinubu, who is Onokpasa’s benefactor.

For clarity, Mr Onokpasa’s article sounded as a thumps up for a criminal state and an applause for illiberal democracy, as practiced then in Anambra State before the coming of Peter Obi. For the records, when Onokpasa and his co-travellers site Obi’s impeachment by the then Anambra State House of Assembly members as a ploy to downplay Obi’s political sagacity, they inadvertently project the LP presidential flag bearer as an astute democrat with the best temperament that adhere to constitutionalism and follow the rule of law. Erroneously, Onokpasa painted the said lawmakers, and his paymaster, Tinubu as corrupt and authoritarian who are not wont to follow due process and the spirit of the law.

Further, Onokpasa’s comparison of Obi and Tinubu, and how the latter was able to advance his political machinery, is very laughable  and smacks of a self-indictment of his principal, Tinubu. Critically, Obi is above the pay grade and class of Tinubu in terms of accountability and transparency in public and private life in all ramifications. Obi unlike Tinubu has never been accused of cornering public funds, nor corruptly enriching himself with illicit and sleazy pension that somehow pan out as a ponzi scheme that is solely reserved for kleptomaniacs. Now, let’s look at the records.

In 2007, weeks to the expiration of his tenure as Governor of Lagos State, Tinubu propped up the then lame duck and lapdog state assembly to promulgate the Public Office Holder (Payment of Pension) Law No 11 Official Gazette 2007 in which Tinubu as a former Governor was and till date is entitled to two houses in Lagos and Abuja; six brand new cars every three years; rapacious salaries and allowances running into millions of dollars, a criminal entertainment allowance, among other allowances such as house maintenance, utility, basic salary, personal assistants. These allowances as Frederick Douglas posited above is a clear case of oppression and robbery of the Lagos people. Sensing this broad day robbery, Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has been in court against Lagos State Government on this. Not done; Tinubu’s  Alpha Beta Company is the chief tax collector in Lagos State with a humongous consultancy fee that runs into billions of Naira.

Not only that, in the last twenty-three (23) years, the APC national leader has been alleged to have appropriated much of Lagos State into a private estate, from appointment  of cronies, land, choice government properties and to the most audacious draining pipes in state finances. Overall, it has been an out right and audacious confiscation of public wealth of the people, in which, Lagos is Tinubu and Tinubu is Lagos. What will then happen if Tinubu becomes the President of Nigeria?  It will be the most dangerous clientele, state capture and pay-to-play administration in world history.

Now, let us flip the page on Obi. At the end of his tenure as Governor of Anambra State, all entreaties and persuasion were made to ensure that Obi promulgated a pension act for himself and other political goons in the state. He vehemently turned down the offer. They offered land and houses, Obi shockingly rejected them and has provided the letter of request and rejection to the public. So, why can’t someone who is accountable and transparent be Nigeria’s president at a time when leadership has become the country’s albatross? If the likes of Onokpasa care to know, Nigeria is sinking, collapsing, tagging  along as the poverty capital of the world and one of the world’s most terrorized states and speeding towards the precipice, thus, Peter Obi represents the change that Nigerians long for to end the current catastrophic slide of the country. A reason that has continued to attract many Nigerians from different class, tribes and faiths who see Obi as an altruistic and sincere presidential candidate for a better Nigeria.

For Nigeria to take its rightful position in the comity of nations in 2023 going forward, Peter Obi is presenting himself as honest, transparent, humble, as a candidate that has a citizens’ approach to governance, charisma, sound mind and age;  a knowledgeable person whose ethos and value system represents accountability and transparency and Nigeria’s current demography. Added to that, Peter Obi’s presidential candidacy symbolizes a cognate allegiance to social justice and development. Conversely, Tinubu does not meet the above threshold nor is he capable of ticking the boxes other than primitive accumulation and confiscation of Lagos State, and a sense of Emì Lo Kan. These are facts that the likes of Onokpasa should face squarely. In all, Peter Obi remains the only pathway to Nigeria’s rejuvenation and greatness in 2023.

 Obi , is a journalist and researcher, writes from Abuja