Peter Obi: A country in the woods’ fighting chance?

BY CHUKWUEMEKA ANTHONY NNAWUIHE

When a country hits rock bottom in a fall, usually in an economic recession or depression, the only way to go is back usually up. And it takes quite a lot to go back up! No doubt, the current regime (2015-2023) has brought the national polity from top to bottom. Let’s be real and true to ourselves. The numbers can be far better than what they are currently. Our HDI (human development index) by country in 2022, within a single number scale of 0 and 1.0 is 0.534, below the minimum 0.55, which places us within the LDC (least developed countries) zone of the world.

The human development index value is determined by combining a country’s scores in a vast and wide-ranging assortment of indicators including life expectancy, literacy rate, rural populations’ access to electricity, GDP per capita, exports and imports, homicide rate, multidimensional poverty index, income inequality, internet availability, and many more. These indicators are compiled into a single number between 0 and 1.0, with 1.0 being the highest possible human development. HDI is divided into four tiers: very high human development (0.8-1.0), high human development (0.7-0.79), medium human development (0.55-.70), and low human development (below 0.55) and are released annually by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)’s Human Development Report Office.

It appears Nigeria is in the woods and the fault lines are not getting any smaller. She’s in a critical condition and at near death’s door confronted with clear and present existential threats; terrorists and bandits and kidnappers blatantly on the prowl now more daring and dastardly in their acts, secessionist agitations getting all the more intense due to perceived injustice and brazen neglect and suppression by government forces, repeated prolonged strikes by university lecturers resulting in distorted academic calendars and half-baked graduates, teaming unemployment and underemployment among the critical sectors of the population – the youths, excessive borrowing without corresponding results of profitable and productive investments to show in the polity, sustenance of corruption laden fuel subsidy regime amidst moribund refineries not producing even any single drop of refined petrol, abysmal power generation coupled with constant collapse of the national grid, expensive and expansive government structures and systems that encourages waste, duplicity and redundancy and the list goes on!

But all hope is not lost. For once in a lifetime, an opportunity sometimes throws itself up and manifests in translating a people’s yearnings and aspirations into a persona of a rare breed who in turn tends to drive and give hope and succour that enkindles in the people (particularly a section thereof) that fighting and can-do spirit. Having constantly been ravished and fleeced by their supposed rulers, rendered impotent, impoverished and conquered, by many loud empty promises, any opportunity to change the current sorry narrative to that of hope and a brighter future should never be allowed to slip by without taking full and assertive advantage of same. Thus beware of the force behind an idea whose time has come.

Peter Obi, with all sense of responsibility, is just one of such a rare breed of unusual politicians. In fact and indeed, he has shown, more often than not, that he is not a politician in the normal hue of a “Nigerian politician” so to speak. He is a unique brand of his own with a proven impeccable track record of integrity, accountability and performance. These facts are verifiable. It gladdens one’s heart to note that he has set the bar higher than the naysayers can ever imagine and changed the political narrative and dynamics in Nigeria in recent times as the 2023 general elections approach.

Ever since he threw his hat into the ring to aspire to contest for the office of the president, the narrative and discourse of the political campaign have somewhat changed for the better. His earnest entrance into the political ring to contest for the national office by offering to serve as our next president and commander in chief, God willing, come 2023, has dramatically changed the tempo from the usual grandstanding campaign promises of yore by the usual politicians, some of whom do not even have faith in their national currency, to issue-based, problems solving solutions, and ideas being discussed in the forefront, with verifiable evidence to show that these ideas have worked and are still working. From consumption-based rent-seeking economy made possible by transactional politicians to a wealth-creating productive technocrat who is not and has never been dependent on the public treasuries of the State for his sustenance or source of wealth till date or slavishly tied to any apron strings of any political god father somewhere in the background calling the shots.

He doesn’t carry the airs of affluence, power and international connections about but evidently and effortlessly bears in himself that infectious ambience of modest but deep substance loaded with experience and ideas characteristic of a technocrat with hands-on experience, who knows the what, where, why and how to run an organisation nay a government of State and make it viable.

It’s one thing to mouth integrity and bandy about a long list of suffixes and prefixes to one’s name so as to sway the people and let them believe that one has accomplished, but it’s another thing to live out a true and sincere lifestyle with unpretentious integrity and character sans compromising one’s principles and values in life. Peter Obi readily ticks all the boxes in the positive. He’s shown in many more ways than one, that he is not desperate to be president but rather, he’s desperate to make Nigeria work and that he’d rather lose doing the right thing than win doing the wrong thing!

That he could muster the courage, candour and audacity to withdraw his membership of the main opposition party, the PDP, after traversing the length and breadth of the country to actively engage party delegates and sell his vision of changing the current sorry narrative of the polity to that of hope, prior the party’s convention that had since been held, on the ground of obvious irreconcilable issues with the party, readily brings to bear his long ossified stand on uncompromising integrity, character and strong will, which only helps to give one a glimpse into the sterner stuff the man is made of.

Take it or leave it, his exit from the party did deal a severe blow on the PDP and any deluded perception that all is still well with the party will be playing the ostrich! Core and top-ranking loyal members of the party from the south-east have since followed suit to exit the party. Distinguished senators Eyinnanya Abaribe, erstwhile minority leader, and Ike Ekweremadu, former deputy president of the senate, et al make the list. It’s doubtful if the party can still boast of that strong committed and faithful following by the people in the south and particularly the south-east any longer, after blatantly zoning the presidency back to the north, against its own enshrined principle of zoning and in spite of a current eight years of a northern Muslim presidency; against all the cry for equity, fairness, justice, and good conscience in favour of a southern candidate, particularly from the south-east.

Peter Obi joining the Labour Party and winning its presidential ticket at their primaries in Asaba, with Prof. Pat Utomi et al stepping down for him, signals a watershed in the political dynamics come 2023. Underestimate him at your peril but the support and real following he’s gathering and enjoying from the young people in the polity is a clear pointer that the much talked about political Third Force might have just been birthed! Peter Obi seems to have changed the narrative and the dynamics, thus have given life and hope to the once discouraged and dampened morale of the youths, who for once showed a phenomenal bipartisan outing in fighting a common enemy by way of the #EndSARS movement. But not until they were hunted down, shot at and killed while exercising their right to peaceful protest against a dysfunctional system as like at a toll gate in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and all other parts of the country!

His catchphrase, “Take back your country!” can’t be more apt at this time. Just like President Obama once said, “Yes we can”, the youths can and will cause a political tsunami come 2023, powered by that strong desire for change from the status quo in the amalgam. They’ve been sitting on the fence until recently but can change the narrative for the better by doing away with the old order of recycling old-timers in and out of political offices and bringing on board the new deal. The old-timers have held down this country for too long and don’t want to let go. But the youth population possesses that critical mass if only they decisively agree to be assertive by getting ready, prepared and willing to channel that massive force into the ballot box!

Truth be told, the country is in dire need of true healing from the current haemorrhage in the polity and complete redirection. That we’re still confronted with calls for agitation for self-determination and for a referendum by the IPOB and the Oduduwa Republic 52 years after a bloody civil war tells a bitter truth that there’s indeed the need for true national healing and reconciliation. Old wounds have been reopened and bitter past experiences recalled to the fore by the tactless conduct and utterances of some political office holders who busy themselves thinking about winning the next election rather than ensuring the safety, welfare and security of the next generation.

My Lord, the Honourable Justice Mary Odili, J.S.C. (as she then was) sounded this clarion call of a warning in her valedictory speech at the special valedictory court session at the Supreme Court, Abuja, recently. That we’re constantly confronted with cold-blooded massacres of innocent persons, kidnappings, destruction and looting by terrorists and bandits all across the polity only show that we’re not safe and a failure on the part of the government to perform its primary duty as a government. Alas! There ought to be a country first, safe and secure, before thinking of governing the same.

No section of the country is too small to be considered a “dot” insignificant or untrustworthy to be allowed to be the number one citizen of the country nor is another section too big and important to be considered the overlord over others and see itself vested with the sole perpetual birthright to always lead and lord it over the other sections exclusively; for to allow this in any guise or form will continuously breed discontent and bitter rancour. No man is created second class or second fiddle in perpetuity to his fellow man in his own country. There ought to be allowed a true spirit of equity, fairness, justice and good conscience after the bitter fratricidal civil war of 1967-1970 to give everyone a true sense of belonging and allowed and supported to freely participate actively in nation-building in any and every sphere of endeavour in the polity. But where this fails, it is better if the people are allowed to freely live separately in peace and paddle their own canoes than to force them to live together in tears, bloodshed and pieces!

It’s time to get this country out of the woods and back on course to economic growth and development, away from the precipice of doom. Peter Obi is our fighting chance of a lifetime to do just that. The difference between the ruling party, APC and the supposed main opposition party, PDP is the difference between six and half a dozen. To keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result is no less different from insanity. He’s the new deal and a vote for him, I strongly believe, will change things for the better and make it possible for the country to come out of the woods. 2023 beckons! Please get your PVCs if you’re registered already or ensure to get registered in active readiness and come out to vote, not the party but the person!

The INEC, we hope, should leave us no doubts in counting on their integrity and independence to truly be independent as to conducting a free, fair and credible election.

Till then, it is well.