Dismissing The Obi Insurgency Presidential Campaign Would Be A Fatal Mistake

The combination of discontent with the global ruling political class, the upsurge in hyper-nationalism and the power of social media has thrown into disarray historical political calculus. It has produced across the globe, many hitherto unimaginable successful insurgency presidential campaigns. From outsider Macron with no prior political Infrastructure in France to comedian Zelenskyy of Ukraine, to Jair Messias Bolsonaro of Brazil, to Ruzo in Kenya who shocked the two biggest and most powerful political empires of Kenyatta and Odinga in the recent Kenyan presidential election, to the biggest insurgent president of them all, Donald Trump, the global political landscape is in turmoil and old assumptions have been thrown out of the window.  

That is the political atmosphere in which the 2023 Nigerian presidential election is taking place.  The Tinubu campaign will be making a monumental and fatal mistake if they take the Obi campaign with levity. Yes, Obi is a chartered prince of the Nigerian exclusive political country club and a former VP candidate on the unsuccessful PDP Atiku-led presidential ticket.  Yes, he was in fact a presidential aspirant in the recent PDP presidential primaries before he jumped ship seeing defeat staring him in the face. Yet like the master camouflager in the marine world, the decorator crab, which camouflages itself by picking things off the bottom around them such as sponge, seagrass, sand or shell and then use a sticky paste made in the mouth to glue the item to their exoskeleton, Peter Obi has performed arguably the slickest political transfiguration in Nigeria history.  Like an amoeba, he has hijacked and engulfed the Labor Party.  He has transformed himself into the revolutionary leader of labour and the defender of the proletariat.  Anyone who takes a man who can do that for granted is a political fool. Obi is running a classic insurgency campaign and he will be well funded. The Igbos have already built up a massive war chest in cash. Peter Obi is running a campaign that is buoyed by the perfect political storm in Nigeria. First and foremost, a well-deserved general discontent with the ruling APC and the entire political class by the electorate, an energized Igbo nationalism which is determined to break the Igbo presidential jinx, and the well-known Yoruba spoiler politics of self-defeat, hate, intrigue and treachery. The perfect storm has created a great opportunity for Obi to shock the Nigerian political landscape and the entrenched political class.

Who could blame our Igbo brethren for seizing on the political opportunity after being left in the Nigerian presidential cold for decades? Yes, our Igbo brethren are political pragmatists who will have no qualms about abandoning the Obi presidential balloon should it pop, and jump on the Atiku presidential train, right now they smell an opportunity and they are all in. The Igbo diaspora and the Igbo business community have been mobilised and energised and they have built up a massive presidential war chest to finance the Obi presidential campaign in the hope of a massive return on their investment.

The internal division within Yoruba and especially in Lagos as exemplified by Jandor’s Lagos for Lagosian movement might see a coalition between the Jandor PDP gubernatorial candidacy and Igbo for a political tsunami in Lagos. A political defeat for Asiwaju Tinubu in Lagos will be a fatal blow to his presidential run.  

The Obidient movement is surging among Yoruba youth and some Yoruba elites and journalists opinion writers and influencers. Complacency by the Tinubu campaign will be deadly. 

The skunk does not change its stinking way.  Yoruba’s well-known penchant for self-defeat, political intrigue and treachery which is often cloaked in the fake garb of political liberalism and cosmopolitanism cannot be wished away. The only wild card that will most likely determine the outcome of the election and potentially doom either the Tinubu and Obi’s presidential balloons will be who the North chooses to vote for. 

Tinubu had better stationed his presidential campaign permanently in the North. He has a lot of damage control and fence-mending to do in the North given the virulent anti-Fulani and anti-Buhari rhetorics and opposition from the Yorubas, especially in the last few years buoyed by the Oodua Nation movement.  Also, unless the Obi insurgency campaign catches fire in the North, Its helium fume-filled political balloon will soon run out and succumb to the law of gravity.  

Atiku will be waiting in the wings like a vulture to clean up the carcass as the Yoruba and Igbos engage in their unending self-assured war of mutual destruction. While Yorubas and Igbos are distracted by their political food fight, the fight for fundamental systemic destruction of the existing Nigerian decadent political structure that will doom the presidency of whoever of the three candidates is elected remains unattended to. That is Nigeria’s political misfortune.  

There is no doubt what the Igbos would do should they sense that Obi might lose. They will shift their votes in support of Atiku.  

A word is enough for the wise.  Let’s hope the Tinubu campaign is taking note.  

•Dr. Adewale Alonge is the President, Egbe Omo Oduduwa of South Florida and Africa-Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development Inc (www.Adped.org). He could be reached at alongeaj@adped. org