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In an election season, political campaign can come in diverse forms, including crude use of language to possibly settle an old score or even attempt to diminish someone’s rising fame and political relevance. Even lending support to one’s favourite candidate can be subtly or brazenly done depending on one’s choice of words and deployment of language, which can also be brutal and lacking tact and diplomacy.
Although politicians have been tasked by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), National Peace Committee and other stakeholders to engage on campaign based on issues and desist from campaign of mudslinging and calumny, but every day, the polity is suffused with hate speeches, diatribes, incendiary comments, ethnic stereotyping of some leading presidential candidates all in an effort to pull some of them down.
If political contestants throw the usual banters at one another, it will be understandable and even rationalized that it is part of the political game. But when such hate-filled comments, which border on jealousy, pettiness, hatred and emotional insecurity, emanate from gubernatorial quarters, they raise cause for concern. And when such ill-digested comments come from the governor of the state of a presidential hopeful in the 2023 polls, the handshake has really passed the elbows. It is against this background that I examine Soludo’s needless verbal attack on the Labour Party presidential candidate for the 2023 polls, Peter Obi. When Anambra State governor, Prof. Charles Soludo cavalierly dismissed the “investments” of former Anambra State governor and presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in Anambra State as “worthless” during an interview with Channels Television, it clearly shows that something is fundamentally wrong with our politics and some of those who play the game, often referred as dirty in some quarters. It also shows that there is indeed something to worry about the quality of characters that occupy political positions in the South East, Igboland and Nigeria. Soludo’s poor outing is unbecoming of a former professor of economics at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), and ex-governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), who supposed to know the value of investment and even the need for instituting the saving culture whether at individual level, corporate or governmental level. Soludo’s vicious attempt to demonize Obi’s saving culture and prudent management of Anambra resources cannot fly.
His attempt to tarnish Obi’s rising political profile is dead on arrival, no matter the level of sophistry, oratory and opprobrium. Although words are not entirely innocent in the way they are used, Soludo’s words on Obi are political and full of evil intent and obviously vague and empty. They were carefully chosen and uttered with great hate and intensity for maximum effect for those he is campaigning for. His obsessed hatred for Peter Obi, his political ambition and Igbo politics and even Ndigbo is not hidden or disguised. His hatred for the “Obidients Movement” is never veiled in his later needless and avoidable lengthy essay on the same subject.
Soludo’s avowed hostility to Peter Obi and his political ambition is embarrassing and uncalled for. Without Obi’s development of APGA and making Willie Obiano to succeed him, Soludo would not have become the governor of Anambra State. His earlier attempt to become the governor of the state under the PDP failed woefully. That is why he should be humble enough to acknowledge those instrumental to his later rise to power. He has not arrived yet, politically speaking. He should watch his political utterances and chew his words before vomiting them. He must exhibit tact and diplomacy as a budding politician. He is now a governor and not a university teacher. Anambra State or Igbo politics should not be taken as his experimental classroom where he acts as the headmaster. He must accept the fact that he does not know everything. Like all humans, he knows in parts. He is never all-knowing. That attribute belongs to the gods and not humans. Soludo must acknowledge and accept his limitations and even shortcomings. He should refrain from playing god. We know his banking consolidation programme and its scars. We know people who lost millions and billions of naira in the stock market on account of his restructuring of the banks and its inspiration for people to invest in the stock market. Yet nobody has selected Soludo for public excoriation for the fall in the value of their investments in the banking stocks and others, which to use his words on Peter Obi, is worth next to nothing now.
His demeaning comment against Peter Obi’s investment in Anambra State, which has attracted opprobrium from the critical public, is worth quoting in full. “I don’t know about the investment. Our interview is about the 2023 budget. I’m not talking about the investments of any of my predecessors. By the way, the one that you talked about I don’t know about that.” In an attempt to utterly rubbish Peter Obi’s investment, the erudite professor, orator and politician went ahead to say: “I think there was something I read about somebody speculating about whatever investment. With what I’ve seen today, the value of those investments is worth next to nothing. So, let’s leave that aside.”
Unfortunately, this is the same Charlie Nwangbafor or Nwangbakwo or whatever he calls himself, who has previously praised to high heavens Peter Obi’s achievements while in office. What has he seen differently now that Peter Obi’s candidature is enjoying nationwide acceptability and fame? This is the same Charlie who saw only an empty treasury and not one half-full shortly after Governor Willie Obiano literally ensured his electoral victory and handed over power to him.
Despite stiff opposition from Osodieme and others, Obiano insisted that it must be Soludo or no one else. And many of us joined Obiano in that journey which we thought was the best for Anambra. We were moved by Soludo’s vision and promise and rhetoric to turn Anambra into Taiwan, Dubai and Japan all at the same time. This vision is yet to materialize. Yet, he is busy grandstanding on Peter Obi. Soludo allegedly met an empty treasury and made prime news out of it. Is that the way to thank and show appreciation to your political godfather? While Soludo’s un-gubernatorial gaffe was about to subside, he came out with another ill-advised and unnecessary tactless treatise entitled: “History Beckons and I will not be Silent (Part 1).” I went through that essay and I didn’t see where history beckoned and where he was being silenced. Since Soludo’s unwarranted intervention has become public knowledge, I will only quote some aspects of it I deem necessary for the sake of illustration and factual representation. In this essay, Soludo is dismissive of the Igbo strategy to engage other Nigerians politically every four years which he could only see as “Nzogbu Nzogbu political dance.”
He went further to deliver what may be regarded as his upper cut, “Let’s be clear: Peter Obi knows that he can’t and won’t win. He knows the game he is playing, and we know too. The game he is playing is the main reason he didn’t return to APGA.” As if not done yet and acting at the behest of a prompter, our erudite professor quipped: “The brutal truth (and some will say, God forbid) is that there are two persons/parties seriously contesting for the president: the rest is exciting drama.” Soludo’s mission to deceive unsuspecting readers is clearly manifest here. His play on words notwithstanding, Soludo’s thesis is full of factual and connotative errors.
There are more than two persons and two parties for the 2023 presidential election. Peter Obi’s Labour Party is even a leading one in that regard. Soludo’s APGA is in the race too except if it is part of Soludo’s exciting drama to the contest. Rabiu Kwankwaso’s NNPP is in the race too. In fact, there are 18 parties on the ballot. Even if Soludo mischievously reduced the contest to two parties, Peter Obi’s LP cannot be missed by any objective assessor of the political scene. Peter Obi’s candidature is a national choice and not an ethnic affair as Soludo wants his readers to believe.
That Obi has captured the national imagination is not in doubt. That Obi’s political fame is steadily rising and that the momentum is high is well acknowledged even by Obi’s critics and political opponents. Agreed that Soludo has a right to express his political opinion and difference, he should not abuse that right to twist facts and try to dismiss Obi’s rising political fame. Although I am not privy to many parts his planned lengthy essay will take, he should either say the right and factual things or forever hold his peace. His strive to tarnish Obi’s fame now will only ruin him politically. He should concentrate on delivering his enticing electoral promises instead of engaging in a worthless political rhetoric.
