You will be right if you describe Mr. Peter Obi as a living nightmare. Those after him are groping in the dark in search of their object of pursuit. They are frightened to the bones in their inability to make sense out of the head of the hydra. His protean composition is a piece of puzzle. Ascribing meaning to it is as complex as finding the meaning of meaning. That is the problem. The Peter they set out to confront cannot easily be pigeonholed. This has tasked his detractors. They are just ill at ease with him. They are beginning to find his presence sickening. Now they think that the immediate remedy to their troubled quest is to hound him into exile. His exit will give them some relief, however temporary.
But Peter, the nightmare, is sticking to his guns. He does not suffer fools gladly. He has refused to be blackmailed into submission. They dreaded him to no end before the elections. But he is dreaded even more after the elections have, supposedly, been won and lost. What then is going on? Why has Obi become such a pain in the ass of those opposed to his political ascendancy?
We can easily trace all of this to the ongoing power struggle. The February 25 presidential election, which the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said produced a winner, has become the greatest undoing of the Nigerian state. The outcome of the election is tearing the country apart. It was one election in which brazenness grew wings. Impunity ruled and reigned. The people just cannot gloss over that assault on their collective intelligence. Even though the electoral commission announced Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as winner, the widely held impression out there is that Peter Obi of the Labour Party won the election. That is the bone of contention. The twist in the election outcome has put the country on edge. The winner has been unable to celebrate. His mood is subdued. He feels somewhat guilty. Sometimes he tries to put up a bold face. But it never really works. Guilt is a great disability. It makes celebration near impossible. The winner is simply scared stiff of the next day.
The loser, on his side, is undeterred. He believes that justice can still be served. He has, as a matter of fact, seized the stage. He is up and about telling his story. He has, so far, left nobody in doubt that what happened on Election Day was an open-air robbery. His traducers do not like this. They feel that he is stealing the show. That is their point of departure. Those who procured victory by all means do not like his guts. They see him as a fly in the ointment. They believe that he could spoil the broth, if he is not put in check.
That explains the trials and troubles Obi is going through. The winner, as we all know, has an ally in the outgoing presidency of Muhammadu Buhari. Together they hatched, nurtured and executed the plot that produced a contentious election outcome. Now, they are working in concert to undermine the man who has stepped out boldly to challenge the sleight of hand of February 25.
Obi, no doubt, has a good story to tell. He has a thousand and one reasons to buttress his claim to victory. But since it is the prerogative of the victor to rewrite history, Obi is being maligned and blackmailed. The APC and its government have accused him of all manner of crimes, including treason. They want him arrested for having the guts to challenge the outcome of the election in court. They are worried that this man could topple the apple cart, if he is not caged.
In their sworn mission to destabilize him, they have had to tap into his private conversation with Bishop David Oyedepo of Living Faith Church. The objective was to undermine him. They are making a big issue out of their criminal indulgence. Then you ask: what is the whole big deal about a conversation between Obi and Oyedepo? Was there any criminal content in their conversation? Assuming, without conceding, that Obi solicited for the votes of Christians in Oyedepo’s flock, what is wrong with that? Does that amount to campaigning on the basis of religion? Obi has repeatedly said, and Nigerians can testify, that he never campaigned on the basis of religion or ethnicity. But those who tapped into his conversation with Oyedepo want to force a different narrative on his campaign. But the dirty trick is not working. Nigerians know when desperate people want to give a dog a bad name in order to hang it.
It is shocking that those who are trying to associate Obi’s campaign with religion are the real people who took religion to nauseating heights in their own campaigns. An arrangement, which insists that both the President and the Vice President must be of the same religion cannot have the moral justification to accuse someone else of religious bias. Same-faith ticket is an assault on the secularity of Nigeria. It is an affront to religious tolerance. It is the antithesis of religious harmony. Those who are guilty of it ought to hide their heads in shame rather than have the effrontery to accuse Obi of religious bias for having an innocuous conversation with a leader of the Christian faith.
In all of this, the point that must not be glossed over is that Obi’s presence in Nigeria is giving his traducers a great deal of discomfort. They are worried that the man who supposedly lost an election is prancing around with great energy. He has not been weakened or sobered by the outcome of the election. If anything, he is looking stronger and moving about with confident swagger, while at the same time assuring his teeming supporters that the battle is not yet over.
In fact, his detractors wish he were not here. They wish he left the shores of the country from where his voice would begin to sound shrill. But Obi has refused to be hounded into exile. He is determined to stay here to fight his cause. The good news is that the campaign of calumny against him is falling flat on its face. Yet, the detractors have vowed not to go to sleep.
Now, they have taken their hunt for Obi beyond our shores. A few days ago, Lai Mohammed was in the United States where he lied immeasurably against Obi. His sponsors were the APC and the government he serves. After Lai’s failed effort in Washington, they have shifted the battle ground to London. Obi was at Heathrow Airport on Easter weekend where it was revealed that his identity has been cloned by someone. He was detained and queried on account of this. But those who are after Obi need to be properly guided. The man is strong-willed, indeed steely. He is a long-distance runner who is not easily jaded out. His traducers may need to tread cautiously lest they hit the rocks in their pursuit of Peter the Rock.