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Following my last Saturday’s opinion on this page titled Obidients and Democratic Apocalypse’, some Obidients wrote in to not just attack my position but to feast on my person. It wasn’t unexpected. I would have been surprised if they all were respectful and well behaved.
One typically wrote that I am not Igbo for holding a different opinion. The so called Igbo forgot that his principal didn’t run the election as Igbo but as a Nigerian and that he got support and votes from across the country. If Obi had won the 2023 election, he would definitely be a Nigerian president and not an Igbo president. My not voting for him doesn’t make me less Igbo but a question of choice. That’s what Soyinka is talking about. People should respect people’s choices and not make this an ethnic question. The future I think Obi represents is not the future that will divide us between the North and South, Igbo versus Nigeria or maybe Christians versus Muslims.
However, not all Obidients suffer from the emotional zombie syndrome. Some are indeed rational thinkers and can engage in issue-based conversations.
When Clement Anoliefoh from Enugu wrote in the following words as a rejoinder, I promised him that I would give his piece a space to demonstrate that I am open to decent conversations on national issues including the last election.
I am happy to present Clement Anoliefoh in his own words:
Thank you for your very thoughtful and well espoused perception of electoral essence as a ritual of democracy purposed to allow people their freedom of choice without fear of harassment and intimidation. But decency and objectivity will be to stick to democratic dictates, no matter whose ox is gored, and even if your personal interests are affected. You accepted that the election was not entirely free and fair. Who were the culprits? So, why should you advise that the result of an election you adjudged not to be free and fair to be accepted? Na waoo!
The court is part and parcel of the democratic processes as you duly acknowledged, so litigation is a civil and democratic means of correcting electoral heist. You should rather recommend it wholeheartedly. Your reference to Chief Arthur Nzeribe refusing to go to court to challenge his opponent is hardly a good example for us. The Chief Arthur Nzeribe we all knew would never give up a fight if he really believed that he won an election.
But we are adequately resourceful to glean the fact of same electoral manipulation on the part of Chief Nzeribe, to which he gave somewhat subtle admission by affirming that “he did everything in the playbook to win the election”. It remains to define his version of the playbook. The ever pragmatic Chief and Senator understood that, “whoever comes to equity should come with clean hands”. Namesake, the question you must answer is this: Is Mr. Peter Obi coming to equity with clean hands? Did he also when he retrieved his gubernatorial mandate after almost three years in Anambra State?
Issues of nobility and political crusade is given execution at the altar of web-like intrigues that lack provable patriotism. The Nigerian elite and literati to which you rightly and deservedly belong are least expected to discharge and bury principles that could aid and avail our long abjection in democratic processes. Or should they?
Your choice of Atiku as presidential candidate beggars belief. We must grant your freedom of choice but, can as well analyse it. Atiku and PDP were traitorous in reneging and repudiating their party consensus agreement on power rotation at the turn of the South-East. Between Atiku and Obi, who is a better and more capable candidate, all qualifications considered? Atiku conceded economic managerial acumen to Obi. What else is needed to revamp the Nigerian comatose economy?
Nobody is a saint, not only the politicians. Even in the cathedral as the respectable Bishop Kukah referred. Only God knows his saints and where their bones are buried. Some of the saints as known, are even worse than the politicians. However, such poorly disguised referential trickery intended as excusatory attenuation of the evil deployments of the real fascist political oppressors as the current Nigerian establishment is well understood and abhorrent. The human imperfection of one cannot justify the obvious contravention and impunity of another, else all divine and secular punitive provisions of the law are vain and meaningless. What do you think about it? The sainthood of anybody is immaterial in this instance. The question begging for proper address is the obvious villainy of electoral thievery. Only the courts can settle the matter.
Chief Nzeribe is hardly any desirable referential paradigm of political decorum and decency but, Mr. Peter Obi is, even if arguably. So your choice of Nzeribe as a political referential model is faulted. Even Chief Nzeribe’s business background cannot stand Obi’s mantra of “go and verify.” Mr. Peter Obi is amply fitted as making politics decent as a politician, thereby fulfilling Chief Nzeribe’s declaration about getting it. As we reject the devil and all his enticements, so also we reject your call for politicians to ponder on Nzeribe’s thesis. Nzeribe’s political philosophy is hardly any workable template for politicians to do any better – a devil’s philosophy. Nemo dat quod non habet. You may recommend him for a core and obnoxious capitalist template.
Would you in all sincerity say that he who was declared a winner actually won the presidential election? All the accusations against INEC aren’t for nothing, dear brother. How come the Senatorial and House of Representatives election results were easily and timely uploaded but the presidential wasn’t? That ostrich and good German attitude can be repulsive and annoying. Would you tell us that INEC is falsely accused? If you had mixed feelings about his declaration, not winning as you put it, why?
Now all that easy and mindless attribution to the Obidients as fascist is clearly seen for its puerility and insincerity. Fact is that fascism is not reasonably ascribable to any political underdog as the Obidients. Fascism is solely attributable to those wielding political power. The Nigerian establishment is ultra-fascist, therefore ascription of fascism to the Obidients in their efforts to wrest power democratically from our perennial political oppressors is both mischievous and patriotically antithetical.
Should our thoroughbred opinion moulders as you lend themselves to such patriotic diametric opposition? For what reason? The Obidients should be rather encouraged, as the political oppressors believe that power must be grabbed and kept at all costs – Tinubu’s obnoxious mantra. They are the real fascists, with daredevil distributaries as M.C. Oluomo, FFK, Festus Keyamo, Bayo Onanuga, Lai Mohammed, et al.
And false impressions are bandied about Obidients becoming like Hitler. The presidency of Nigeria will be in the able and patriotic hands of Mr. Peter Obi. Obidients will not be his cabinet ministers; they are mere patriotic citizens that wish for a positive political change in Nigeria. Why that mischievous ascription to them? Anybody who prefers the ultra-fascist Nigerian establishment as represented today has explanations to make. Such person is part and parcel of the deadly parasites ravaging the resources and destiny of this great nation which has been in permanent developmental inertia. Leveraging our Igbo nation rich and unmatched proverbial repository, we advise, “whoever bathes with his clothes on should try to rediscover self”.
Your argument about the number of seats Labour party won in the National Assembly as indicating their loss of the presidential election is one wilfully circumscribed and delusional mentation. Voting is now done for individual person’s capability, no longer a party bandwagon thing.
(Please end it here and let it flow online from here.)
Mr. Peter Obi takes the deserved credit of changing the political narratives. Your pretences about it will not detract that fact. Obi won in Lagos State. Did Labour candidates win majority votes in Lagos National and State Assembly elections? Did Senator Chimaroke Nnamani not lose to Labour Party in Enugu State, and did PDP not win the governorship?
That fascist attribute that ensured electoral victory for political parties in the past is what the Obidients have been struggling so hard to dismantle, and they are succeeding.
The herring posture that some people are threatening the judiciary is most regrettable, coming from people who should know better. The violent incitement and actual maiming of prospective voters by M.C. Oluomo and company remain the greatest trigger for insurrection, yet all of that have been swept under the carpet. The mere analysis of the obviously manipulated election results now becomes incitement to insurrection? Ours is a superior mentation on the matter. The cesspool of the Nigerian judicature isn’t any different from both the executive and the legislature. These are reasons for the seeming impatience of the Obidients who want a better society. Nobody threatened the judiciary when they gave senatorial ticket to Ahmed Lawan who contested for presidential ticket. Are the two the same?
This is, contrary to your position, the best time for the judiciary to clean up their Augean stable, by dispensing justice without fear or favour, without let or hindrance. You believe that Nigerian judges rarely give judgements based on political colouration? That assertion is the best definition of naivety and prevarication. The two cases of Lawan and Uzodimma will suffice to prove you wrong.
Namesake, the worst aspect of your tractate is according the notorious and long compromised DSS any modicum of sincerity and professionalism in their ill-intended and prejudiced puffery. Have they made any arrest? How would a call for interim government enthrone it? Did IBB receive calls for interim government before he foisted his contraption on us which was obviously preparatory to Abacha’s ascension? Brother, I know you know that to be mere herring and hocus pocus. Why do you lend your golden pen for the advancement of falsities? Peaceful public demonstration is a civilized way of airing grievances as done in developed nations. Were they violent? It is all proof of ultra-fascist posture of the Nigerian establishment to condemn it. Why give it your imprimatur?
That paragraphic devotion to any possible military intervention is a wasted effort. Percipience dictates that we read in-between the lines. The Nigerian military and all security agencies are long given to the apron strings of our political oppressors. They are all part of the cesspool. You should rather expect their intervention only when power is wrested from the oppressors.
Yes, I agree with you that DSS should stem the tide of rumour mongering about interim government if they are serious. My departure point with you is that I will not pretend that they are really serious and patriotic. They have never been. About time we are allocated spaces in the traditional media to offer unbiased opinion on national issues
