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Calculated attempts to undo democracy in our country are on. However, such attempts have started to show stresses. Those behind it are beginning to unmask themselves. A series of recent episodes has exposed these tendencies. The farce unfolding in Adamawa governorship supplementary election is just one horrifying spectacle to point at. It’s not hard to recognise the final lunges of desperate politicians who see power as an entitlement. Such people have no agenda to accomplish great goals but to dominate other men and bend people to their will. It begins with sending surrogates to search frantically for smoking guns against anyone considered as a formidable force standing in their way. These aides have no doctrine or idealogy of their own.
They only carry out what their paymasters ask them to do. That’s why they always play fast and loose with the facts. So far, they and their masters have shown an absence of leadership and a complete absence of a grasp of what this country is and what should be done to heal the divisiveness that the APC government has created in this country. They malign the truth and push out all manner of poppycock against the Labour Party Presidential candidate Mr. Peter Obi. By the way, where is the ‘President-elect? Has he gone AWOL?
My advice: When you look only through the rearview mirror, you take your eyes off the real issues. Nobody is asking the question. Instead, the focus is on Peter Obi. I knew it would come to this ugly present the very moment Obi trounced Bola Ahmed Tinubu in his ‘homestate’ of Lagos during the Feb 25 Presidential election. With that unforgettable outcome, it was pretty clear that all manner of smear campaign will be deployed against Mr Obi. The current attacks on Obi by Tinubu’s surrogates are not just for now but also for the future. You know why? The end of every election marks the beginning of another one, four years on. The attacks on Obi predate the presidential election. But the outcome of the election and the unexpected excellent showing by Obi reignited the present attacks. They have come with so much venom. But with no evidence to nail him.
As I wrote on this page after the presidential election, I did say with conviction, that the performance of Obi at the election was the triumph of the human spirit. One of the landmarks of his presidential quest was his ability to draw a new generation of young Nigerians into politics. He played politics by its rules. Despite unprovoked attacks on his person and supporters, fondly called the Obidient Movement, he remained presidential, cool and committed to the cause. To borrow one cliché, Peter Obi ‘shook things up’. He reawakened our consciousness perhaps more than any politician has done in this political dispensation. I added that his self-confidence and Christian faith gave him the courage to stand firm.
Whatever will be the final outcome of the presidential election now before the court , history will record it for Obi that indeed, there’s so much that one man with strength of character and integrity can do to positively change the course of politics and governance in his country. The message, the energy that Obi generated, cutting across ethnic and religious divide, are certainly things we have not seen in many years. Simply put, Obi has become a nightmare of sort for the political establishment. All of this is the reason for the present, desperate attacks on his person and the Obidient Movement. The verbal swipes are reminiscent of what France was when Yves Betrand was appointed the Domestic Chief Spy from 1992-2004. For the 12 years he was Chief spy, Bertrand filled spiral- bound notebooks with rumours about perceived ‘enemies’ of the state. Check out the connection with what the Directorate of State Services(DSS) said recently about Interim Government! Betrand’s snoops on those considered threats to the government of the day were documented in what he called his private “aide-memoir”. As the years went by, Bertrand began to release damaging reports on perceived enemies of the state. The tabloids in France splashed those reports on their front pages. It had one aim: to intimidate, and if possible, end the political careers of the ‘enemies’. In the end, Bertrand who once described himself as “minesweeper” of the Republic was found dead in his Paris home in June, 2013.
Nigeria is now in the era of lawlessness and miscalculations of the wicked. Peter Obi is their prime target. The script is: If one plot fails, try another. Over three of these devious plots against Obi have been executed. None is yet to stick on him. First was an alleged phone conversation with the presiding Bishop of Living Faith Church David Oyedepo. In that conversation, Obi was alleged to have asked the cleric to mobilise support for him ahead of the Feb 25 presidential poll. As it turned out, APC reportedly ‘doctored ‘ the audio recording. As the Obi/Datti media office said, it was a “product of the endless forgeries peculiar to APC”. There was also the contrived drama in the Ibom Air, another machination against the Obidient Movement. From there, they moved to orchestrate Obi’s ‘detention’ London Heathrow airport.
Perhaps the most devious of these plots was the allegation by the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, accusing Obi of treason. This is totally malicious and pure fiction. Lai Mohammed, we all know, is a master of lies and deceit. He has sold these outright lies in foreign countries, the USA and UK, where he has wasted the last two weeks at the expense of Nigerian taxpayers’ money to de-market Obi. He described the 2023 elections as the “freest and most transparent” in our political history. Lies do have expiry date. Who says our politicians are not a fun to follow? The question: Where did Obi go wrong? By simply challenging the outcome of the presidential election that observers agreed was flawed. This much is clear about the Information Minister: Just like the government he serves, Alhaji Lai Mohammed always lives in denial. He has this proclivity, an irritating habit of talking too loosely. He likes defining truth downwards. He makes simple things more complex. These are blinding lights to success. They are the easy road to failure. But this man continues to walk on these pathways of falsehood to hoodwink the undiscerning. It’s a reflection of his inner character.
In all of these attempts to demonize Obi and inflict irredeemable damage to his reputation, the APC government has failed. The government and those carrying out these vicious plots have some questions to answer. First, is the identity cloning incident at the Heathrow airport. Weeks after this happened, the Nigeria Immigration Service(NIS) under the Interior Ministry is yet to explain to Nigerians what it knows about the matter, especially after facts emerged that the International passport of the imposter who passed himself off as Peter Obi, was issued by the NIS . That’s the point NEO AFRICANA Centre, a policy think tank has been making. The issues the Centre has raised are critical. It should not be ignored. I am aware that the desperate search for smoking guns, the high-tech lynching against Obi has taken a life of a project by the APC government. The attacks are full throated. But unknown to his traducers, the present fraudulent plots against Obi are not going to make the man cave in. He’s not going to flee the country and abandon the peaceful pursuit to reclaim his stolen mandate through the judicial process. He has said that much. Anybody who knows Peter Obi, (even his own enemies), will attest to his strength of character. He has become a template, a pillar of integrity, disciplined, focused and thoughtful person, and an advocate of probity, accountability and transparency in governance. He is a man not giving to cheap lies, or the weaselly ways of our politicians. He’s not a stranger to such evil machinations. The same kind of cheap blackmail was deployed at some point when he was Governor of Anambra state. It failed. So will this current ‘bombs’ being thrown at him.
