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It is now obvious that the tag ‘Obidient’ is no longer about Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party. It has become a ubiquitous tag in the clamour for change.
Obidient rises from the ashes of EndSARS. EndSARS was a demand for change. It began as a demand for an end to the excessive brutality of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) in its interaction with Nigerians, especially youths; it later metamorphosed into a demand for change in leadership of the country and institutionalisation of good governance.
For those who still remember, though the Muhammadu Buhari government was quick to approve the demands of the EndSARS protesters, the youths moved a notch higher to demand an end to bad governance, which the APC government represented.
Though the movement was forcefully crushed, the youths who desire a better county only retreated. They did not give up their quest. They only waited on time.
2023 was to provide them a most desired opportunity to fight for a changed polity. If our brains are still functional, we will recall still, that the 2015 general elections was successful for APC because many people believed the party actually meant its slogan –change.
For many, change was the elixir to fix Nigeria and bring an end to manifest corruption and primitive looting of public resources; end orchestrated and properly choreographed insecurity which accounted for endless bloodletting; secure school children from marauding criminal gangs; stop wastage of public resources; fix public infrastructure –roads, schools, hospitals, water supply, electricity; as well as create the necessary environment for investments which would drive job creation and wealth.
Those were some of the expectations that made the 2015 general election successful for APC.
However, those expectations vanished like gas as corruption and mindless looting of public resources became state policy while public infrastructure suffered more debilitating decays with the poverty index spiraling out of control while more youths lost their jobs.
Fresh graduates could not find space in the public/civil service due to a sustained tradition of age falsification and documents alterations which extended the retirement age of many public/civil servants thus clogging the space for fresh hands and making recruitments into pubic/civil service fall back to nepotism and ownership of a special certificate –the privileges certificate which only filial relationships can guarantee.
So, the time between October 2020 and February 2023 kept Nigeria’s youths looking out for an option other than those provided by PDP and APC.
That option was found in Labour Party which provided them a new rallying point to launch out, this time, democratically, in the demand for good governance and enthronement of a country that would work, not just for them, but also, for the old brigade that had perfected the art of choking the space and making it very difficult for the youth to participate. It was to be a fight between dislodging the old brigade from the dinner table and the old brigade resisting to be dislodged.
Of course, the youths knew that it wouldn’t be easy to take food from a lion’s mouth. But, they were prepared to fight.
Labour Party provided them the platform to launch an attack on a perverted and destructive socio-political system that had blighted their future and stalled their lives.
The system they fight against is one created by the old brigade. It was a system that forced graduate youths that are in their late 30s and 40s working as social media influencers for the old guards; or, operating as commercial motorcycle and tricycle operators. Many engage in other menial jobs for survival.
Some have had to japa to foreign lands where they are dehumanized with the sort of jobs they do and their living environments. Many of those who stayed back are frustrated by their country which, in essence, ought to give them hope for better future.
This is reason the message shared by the Labour Party presidential candidate resonated well with the youths and attracted many of them. It was for them, a message of hope and possibilities. It was also, a challenge of the status quo.
It was a message that attracted understanding and support from the six geopolitical zones of the country. It was not locked in any particular zone.
Therefore, Obidient became a new metaphor for a movement that aimed at achieving changes that Nigerian youths want to see in the polity. These are changes, which, in the mind of youths, would liberate their country from the stranglehold of the old guard who had denied them opportunities to become who they want to become.
Historically, the new struggle by youths is similar to actions taken by Nigeria’s youths of the 1957-1960 era toward achieving independence from Nigeria’s colonisers.
Just as the struggle then knew no ethnic and religious boundaries, the new youth-propelled struggle, tagged Obidient, ought to know only one ethnic group –the Nigerian.
This is why it is infantile to suggest, as some have already done, that the post-February 25 presidential election heat in Nigeria, is something between Obi and President-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu; or, between the Igbo and Yoruba. No, it is not. It has never been and will not be.
Rather, it is something between the youth who is demanding a better society run on real democratic principles; a country where merit means much more than favouritism and nepotism; a country where the law works for all in exactly the same way and, the old guards who, for fear of losing their entitlements from government, must fight to remain within the power cycle.
This struggle is encapsulated in the Marxian ideology that all human struggles is but class struggle.
For me, the Marxian thought offers a sociological explanation for the anti-Tinubu and anti-Obi invectives that is ongoing. This is because; the two represent two different classes in the struggle, between the youths and the old guards, for the soul of Nigeria.
Here, Obi represents the youth as his messages resonate more with them but riles the old guards who see in the youths an uprooting and destruction of empires that must be dismantled if Nigeria is to regain its soul.
