By Charles Anike
As the 2023 general elections are drawing closer, it has also become clearer that Mr Peter Obi of the Labour Party will win the presidential election landslide. The acceptability of the Obi candidacy across all tribes, all religions, all classes etc throughout the country is overwhelming to old horses and of course also attracting fierce anger and envy, even from Obi’s immediate ‘family’ championed by Gov Chukwuma Charles Soludo of Anambra State.
Let’s look at some of the factors that are daily counting to the Obi increasing influence, chances and followership across the country and even beyond. One of such is Obi’s ‘Go-and-Verify’ slogan. Mr Peter Obi, whenever and wherever he is addressing his audience, always makes references to his verifiable antecedents while in office as governor of Anambra State. Such is not common among our political class of this age, as most of their activities in various offices they occupied are shielded.
This is so because their hands are stained with corruption. The Peter -Obi-go-and-verify-slogan has endeared him to the Nigerian people, especially the youths, who now do not only believe in Obi’s capacity and ability, but his integrity, which is lacking in other candidates. The go-and-verify-slogan of Obi is very assuring of a guaranteed future under his leadership as the next president of Nigeria.
Another very important factor is the revolutionary dimensions that the Obi candidacy has brought into the Nigerian political space. On a daily basis, Obi is introducing new dimensions in the political campaign and that has kept the opponents’ camps to their toes. And for that reason, many youths who hitherto do not have any business peeping into politics of the country are now not only becoming interested but are getting seriously involved, due to the ray of hope being preached by Obi in public events.
Bear in mind that the youths account for about 70% of the active voters but before now, they were only used for thuggery, rigging and assassinations of political opponents. This is the very first time in Nigeria’s political history that the youths are committing their hard-earned resources to campaign and mobilize fellow Nigerians to vote a credible candidate.
Another obvious factor playing to the advantage of Obi for victory is the glaring bitterness and dangerous accusations among the members of the two major political parties (APC and PDP). These two parties have before and after their primaries engaged in unending battles among the party chieftains. The APC presidential primary that produced Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu left much to be desired, as it ended up as a game of the highest bidder. It was a DOLLAR rain presidential primary. The dollar rain ‘messed up’ both the vice president, Senate president and the minister of transport.
The outcome of this of course is bitterness and cold wars between Tinubu and the losers. To further worsen the bitterness and bad blood in the party was the Muslim-Muslim joint ticket of Tinubu and Shettima. This couple with Tinubu unstable health conditions of course becomes the last straw that broke the camel’s back.
The Muslim-Muslim ticket of the APC has and still generating a lot of heat and controversies, for which many northern Christian leaders and APC Christian party chieftains have vowed to resist. This has resulted in the party leadership even hiring fake ‘bishops’ to represent in their events. Couple to the above are the many scandals associated to Tinubu’s health, his certificates, drug dealings, age reduction and more. The above and many more are contributing to Peter Obi’s chances.
Then the main opposition party – PDP – is experiencing a worse scenario since after the charade conducted by Ayu, where tribal gang-up was displayed and dominated the entire process. The PDP under Ayu has become irredeemable because the greed of one man has continued to detect the direction of the party. Some set of people within the PDP are so over ambitious that they move in and out of the party at will. I can tell you that the present leadership of the PDP consists mainly of men with inordinate ambitions who will never keep to or honour agreements.
Atiku and his cohorts go in and out of the party and desperately wanting to grab power at all costs, no matter whatever compromise. They successfully disorganized the long standing zoning arrangement of the party. Even the vice presidential candidate by extension also betrayed the southern governors whom he hosted to insist on power shift agreement.
While Atiku was busy promising all the southern aspirants a vice presidential slot, Okowa on his part was busy working for the emergence of Atiku, while pretending to the southern governors that they were on the same page on the power shift to the south. Who can be trusted in the PDP? And can a house be divided against itself stand?
The above resulted and led to the emergence of the G5 Governors to fight the accumulated betrayals.
The summary of whole drama showcasing in both the ruling APC and PDP points that God Almighty has rejected them and consequently Nigerians have equally rejected them to accept the Obi-Datti Presidency. There’s a season for everything under the earth, hence all the abominable activities that were sustaining the two brothers in crime (APC and PDP) have become a public knowledge, made possible by the revolutionary activities of the Peter Obi movement and his go-and-verify-slogan. Obi enjoys the support of the Nigerian youths, the churches, Muslims, civil societies, labour force and also elders. And finally, the new ELECTORAL LAWS of electronic transmission is highly a PLUS to the Buhari government.
Anike is the national president, Eastern Union
