The Peter Obi challenge, by Obi Nwakanma

A friend of mine sent me the link of the clip of my old buddy, Dr Reuben Abati, declaring that the civil war in Nigeria has not ended. Therefore the North will not vote for the likely candidacy of Peter Obi, an Igbo from the East. It of course struck me on two levels. Dr. Abati seemed deliberately to be lubricating tired and self-serving ideas.

The second part, where this hit very pointedly was at a very sudden realization! Dr. Abati is afraid of a Peter Obi presidency. He is not even hiding it. But for what reason? Why is the revanchist arm of the Yoruba in the Southwest of Nigeria a little too startled by the prospects of the Obi presidency? It is a question worth exploring. 

But first, the question, why take recourse in very old and tired ideas and attitudes of Nigerian politics? Why this level of obfuscation? I mean that in the sense of the deployment of dark, essentialist arguments, to try to confuse folks who may not have enough time to think deeply. Nigerians are smart, thoughtful people. But there are many still who cannot think deeply. They are too busy to think. They stay always at the surface of things. Thinking is not their forte. I am sure many of this type listen to Dr. Abati, and go, “ah, yeah, makes sense…” whether or not Abati makes sense.

They do so because they trust that good old Reuben, nearly long in the tooth in this business of punditry, should relay some truth with the efficacy of a truth-machine. But Dr. Abati has been known to be dramatic occasionally with the truth of our national life, particularly when it comes to the Igbo. I sometimes think it comes from some unresolved rivalry – a bet he probably took in his undergraduate years at the University of Calabar, where he was classmates with many young Igbo, and friends too, and was mentored and taught by many Igbo – the likes of Kalu Uka, and Chris Nwamuo, among others. 

Those may now be wondering, what’s been biting Abati’s hind, on the question of the Igbo. I am not saying that Reuben is a tribalist. I am not saying he is not. I am saying that the man is an intellectual – brilliant and capable – but intellectuals are sometimes overrated, and self-serving. I am not even saying Dr. Abati is self-serving, or that he alone has an Igbo problem. I am saying that any problems he has with the Igbo may not in the end be rational. But he does have a Peter Obi problem. I think he is startled by the prospects of an Obi presidency. I should not waste much ink psycho-analyzing good old Reuben.

But I should say the following, in response to his proposal that the Civil war has not ended, and therefore the “North” will not vote Peter Obi. The argument about the North and the Civil war is tired. It has always struck me as too clever by half. I will come to explain this. But here is the point I am going to insist on: the war may not have ended for Dr. Abati and folks like him, and they are welcome to keep fighting the war. But for the Igbo, the war has ended. They have moved on. They are waiting for other Nigerians to meet them, where they always have been: far ahead of the rest. Here is why the war has ended for the Igbo: they are everywhere in Nigeria. They do their business. Engage in their daily lives.

 Pay their taxes. Do their civic duties, and for years, have minded their businesses, unwilling to disturb the apple cart in so far as they are left well alone to find the means to feed their children and imagine a future for them. 

It is true that in places like Lagos, most recently, paid street gangs, and pack dogs of the “Alaye” variety have been unleashed to harass them, burn their property, threaten their livelihood, and shove them around, especially during election time. What these folks forget is that the Igbo have their own hoodlums, and street gangs too, of the “akpu-obi” variety. 

The Igbo too have burglars and armed robbers, and bogey-bogey men who can be deployed to unleash mayhem, and keep  everyone restless. For afterall, in the home of a great man, you have all sorts. It is not that the Igbo are powerless or without options. But they are under serious restraint, because the Igbo have fought a war, and have come to that realization that those who run quickly to war, often forget that war means death. The Igbo have fought a war and know how to organize resources for war. Many young Igbo were trained in guerilla warfare by the Biafran Organization of Freedom Fighters (BOFF) – and those are teachers, traders, retired civil servants, and all sorts today. That trader you see in Idumota, or Ochanja, or Sabongari, is most likely a trained soldier – and if triggered, has the mastery to kill quickly and efficiently. 

The Igbo are the only civilian population in Nigeria that have tactical training, because as young boys, this passing generation were child-soldiers, and fought as combatants. That is why when some ignorant Nigerians talk about war and about fighting, the Igbo smile, shake their heads, and try to make peace. Why? Because what they saw fighting as kids, many of their peers have never seen, and do not understand, even as old men. 

When a fifteen year-old child combatant sees the piercing, deep ochre eyes of a night animal staring back at him in the forest, and he has only a single bullet left, and he survives it, you do not talk glibly to him about war. So, when Dr. Rueben Abati declares that the Civil war has not ended, all he does is talk about what he does not know. He did not experience the war. People like me did, and we were the lucky ones to survive on ration milk. 

Now, if the war has not ended, is Dr. Abati suggesting to the Igbo to reorganize and go back to the trenches? To fight back, because, frankly, the Igbo have always thought that the war ended. They agreed to return to Nigeria and not trigger the second phase – the Guerilla phase – on the compromise of a “No Victor, No vanquished.” So far, they have kept their own end of the bargain.But since 1970, adversaries of the Igbo in Nigeria, have used state directed policies to try to obliterate the Igbo, and force them into a dot, to use the words of the late dullard of Daura. The Igbo have had enough of this actually, and Peter Obi presents a challenge which we must, as Nigerians, take seriously. I think it is important to judge Peter on his own merit. Whether or not he is Igbo, should not now matter. 

If we weigh him both by his conduct, and by all the right noises he makes, he presents a far better alternative to Nigerians than the current man in Aso Rock, who within two years, has bettered Buhari in the department of mediocrity and incompetence. Peter Obi has campaigned on the question of whether the cost of bread knows ethnicity, religion, or region. Nigeria is in a deep mess. The years of the APC in power has complicated the lives of Nigerians who no longer talk about poverty, but about survival.

Tinubu might be giving jobs to his Yoruba acolytes, but how is that reflecting on the ordinary lives of the Yoruba of the Southwest? The question Tinubu has raised for the Yoruba, by those who have heard them talk about “Omoluabi” and the Yoruba genius for governance is, so  Jagaban Tinubu is the best the Yoruba can do?  Where is that organizational genius? Where is that elevated vision that many a Yoruba have boasted about? But of course, this would be a reductive question, because Tinubu does not represent the Yoruba as people. He represents his own business interest, and where it converges with his Yoruba interests, he takes it further West. 

Now, Peter Obi presents himself, not as a candidate of the Igbo. Of course he is Igbo. His Igbo world view will come to play inexorably if he is elected president. But one can then only hope that it will be a worldview that represents the finest of Igbo idealism – to build a fair, just, equitable, and efficient nation that will serve the Igbo as well others with whom they share the nation called Nigeria well. That his presidency will not be of the Igbo “Agamaevu!” Because there those types too among the Igbo. 

So far, Tinubu has proved incapable of delivering just and visionary government. He is borrowing money in the name of Nigeria, enriching mostly his small coterie of Yoruba and Lebanese friends, but not the regular Joes of Molete. And I can say this to Reuben, from where I perch, taking studied notes: ifINEC conducts a clean election, the depth of anger, despair, and deprivation among the Yoruba today, will cost Tinubu the The North East or the North Central?

There is no longer a single North. If the Peter Obi campaign builds a formidable ground operation, and there is a fair election, he will win in the North. That is where the real issue is: Fair elections. The contemporary “northerner” is as desirous of a good life, security, jobs,  individual freedom, and well-being as the “southerner.” In any case, that North/South binary has long disappeared. Only the likes of Dr. Abati, who are still stuck in the past continue to stoke it. I should remind him, what the famed political economist, Immanuel Wallerstein wrote about nation-building: “to build a nation,” Wallerstein wrote, “ it is not enough to have a past.

One must have a present.” But I’m afraid those who claim that the North will not vote Peter Obi because he is Igbo, still live in the past. There are more people today in the North who have no idea what the civil war was about. They suffer the fatalities of our current society, and are desirous of change. If Peter Obi’s campaign can reach them, and convince them, they will vote him, irrespective of what mother-effing naysayers think.

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