Dreaming with Peter Obi

There are days I wake up and I strongly believe Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, will win the presidential election in seven weeks. But there are other days. There are other days when I’m certain this is just a dream. Today is one of those days when I’m torn, so I decided to bring my thoughts to the open square for scrutiny. Please hear me out. 

For people who know me, online and offline, you can tell I am a very optimistic person. I’m that guy who believes we can download food from the internet in the next 10 years. I’m the guy who would support a team losing 4-0 in a football match and say we can recover in the last 15 minutes of the match. I’m also that guy who believes Nigeria can double its gross domestic product in a six-year period. These things are difficult, but I do not consider them impossible.

At the start of this election campaign, I strongly believed the 2023 election will be a turning point for Nigeria. I still believe it will be,  just that I am now a lot detached from it emotionally. For the first time since the return of democracy in 1999, there is a viable third candidate. Not just a third force on paper, but an actual third force. All the excuses Nigerians give, about not having a choice outside of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), is no longer tenable.

In 2019, the excuse was that Fela Durotoye, Kingsley Moghalu, Omoyele Sowore, Oby Ezekwesili, and other names considered as the third force could not come together as a single team to defeat what was described as the “twin devil” of the APCPDP.

Once upon a third force

Can Obi win the presidential election? If your answer is an emphatic yes, then you are one of the following: 1) An Obi supporter 2) An incurable optimist 3) A first-time voter or 4) Someone who has no respect for poverty. In 2019, a few people believed Fela Durotoye, consulting guru and motivational speaker, could win the election as a third force. A few more understood he would not win, but thought he would get the educated elite in his corner and post respectable results.

When all was said and done, Durotoye could only manage 16,779 vote. In hindsight, only two kinds of people believed Durotoye could win: the incurable optimist and the Durotoye supporter.

In that election, Omoyele Sowore, founder of Sahara Reporters, polled just over 33,000 votes. Moghalu and Ezekwesili, who were considered to be fine candidates also had similar results.

Before that election, many Nigerians believed that if the third force of 2019 came together and presented a single candidate, they stood a chance at the presidency. What were they thinking? Would we feel the same way after 2023 election?

Peter Obi is a different third force

If Peter Obi contested the 2019 election on a separate ticket as the main presidential candidate, the buzz may not be as loud as we have it today. But the times are different. A lot happened between 2019 and 2021, and a huge part of the lot is the #EndSARS protest. A lot of young people, as a result of that experience, have become both extremely tired of the old order and intensely interested in a possibly new Nigeria.

Obi has a lot of things working for him. The first is the EndSARS campaign and youth dissatisfaction with the old order. Second is how he is different from the other frontrunners in terms of his faith, his age, and track record. The way he walked out of the PDP after the party ignored the rotation of power is a plus. Need I speak of his frugal life and governance style, which many say is needed at this time when Nigeria’s debt burden is at its highest point in recent history?

There is also the tiny issue of “it is time for Igbo presidency”. All of these are working for Obi.

However, there are times when I think that the things working against him are more than the things working for him. Religion is one. There are people who will never vote for a man who does not pray five times daily. There are party men: People who would never vote outside their party, and their family’s party.

The ethnic card is also very potent. I once tweeted something that got me in hot water. I said if we all voted along ethnic lines, Obi will not win. If we all voted along religious lines, Obi will lose. If we all voted along party lines, Obi may be third. And we know many Nigerians vote this way. So where are Obi-votes coming from?

The most troubling of all the things against Obi is poverty. Yes, poverty. The LP candidate is quick to say 133 million Nigerians are living in multidimensional poverty. I hope he knows that also means tens of millions of Nigerians have motivations to sell their votes on election day. Recent elections show that Nigerians are more comfortable with selling their votes than experiencing violence at the poll.

People now say with flare: “I don’t mind if people sell their votes, I just don’t want violence”. This has consequences for Obi’s ambitions.

Dreaming with Peter Obi

On the days I believe Obi can win, I tell myself that “people who have done what virtually everyone considers impossible, can do it again”. Obi has done remarkable things in the past. He has won two elections, so he knows how to win. He has won at the courts twice, so he knows how to do that too. He has rallied the young people in Nigeria like we have not seen before (outside the APC and PDP).

As this optimism builds, I pick up the map of Nigeria to seek out states where Obi will win,  and it becomes relatively clear that I may just be dreaming. Are you dreaming too? Pick up a map. List 19 states where Obi will win. If you can, then you may be up to something. Good luck.

You can reach ‘Mayowa on Twitter @OluwamayowaTJ