Peter Obi, former governor of Anambra State and serial defector, has jumped ship again.
He has deserted the Labour Party (LP), which rescued him, gave him a refuge and offered him a platform to contest the 2023 presidential poll.
His new abode is the African Democratic Congress (ADC), the Siamese half of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), on which platform he paired with former Vice President Atiku Abubakar as presidential running mate during the 2019 poll.
Obi has been involved in the coalition talks from the beginning. But he may have delayed his official declaration in anticipation of a concession. After the defection, the question is: what next? Will Atiku jettison his long-standing presidential ambition and step down for him during the national convention of the party?
If Atiku steps down, it means the prediction of the marabouts that he will one day rule Nigeria is false. If the Adamawa-born politician comes down from that Olympian height to now become the sponsor of a running mate – a mere spare tyre – to Obi, it is not a good crowning of an illustrious political career.
Has Obi agreed to serve as the running mate to Atiku in 2027? Will that not be contradictory to his boasting that he never travelled round the world to learn governance just to become a vice president, a footnote or an addendum?
Is Obi now ready, after a careful self-reassessment, to eat the humble pie and accept being the running mate again in 2027, when Atiku will be 81, with an intention to succeed him later, if he wins the poll?
Has the ADC made any pronouncement on zoning or rotation to either the North or South in the next general election?
Have Atiku and Obi agreed to step down to allow another person, from the North or South, to run, with the two veteran contenders joining hands to build support for the candidate, in the spirit of national sacrifice?
What is the joker?
Obi has something going for him. Although he lost the 2023 poll, it was a historic outing for him. After borrowing the LP, he threw his hat in the ring a few months before the election and scored over six million votes, trailing Atiku’s over seven million votes and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s over eight million votes.
At Enugu, capital of Enugu State and political headquarters of the Southeast, the former Anambra State governor tried to showcase the relic of his personal structure. Typical of an ethnic champion, Obi attempted to regionalise his new party, the ADC. The Enugu gathering was largely an Igbo affair, with few chieftains from other regions as spectators. But his supporters rationalised the ethnic outing, saying that charity begins at home.
Those who attended the defection were in two categories. The first category comprised the Atiku gang of Southeast origin, the same old faces of aggrieved co-travellers and former men of power now smelling the aroma of power from afar. The second category had Obi’s followers from the LP, who had hibernated in the party with him for three years.
Apart from few negligible federal legislators who defected along with him, those keeping Obi company are spent forces who have lost mobilisation prowess. Whether or not Obi, who ditched Atiku after the 2019 general election, could be trusted by associates of the former Vice President now in ADC would have to be ascertained.
Obi’s speech at the defection event was unimpressive. It was a mere rambling that lacked coherence. It was devoid of substance, focus, depth and clarity. It smacked of self-glorification. His remarks showed that the charm that endeared him to many has faded.
Expectedly, the APC government came under attack. But no alternative programme was articulated. Obi said he had read new books on Indonesia and Malaysia, and promised to implement the theories he came across in the books written by some scholars.
His departure from LP underscored his lack of leadership ability to rebuild and put the house in order. He left behind a party in tatters, factionalised, polarised, used and dumped. That Obi could not resolve the protracted crisis soiled his profile. It queries his capacity to broker effective reconciliation at a critical moment in the party’s journey. He appears to be concerned about his personal ambition and not the collective survival of the party. It is ironic that a man who could not foster unity in a small party like the LP is promising to promote the unity of Nigeria.
The is no alignment of ideas. Ideology has long been discarded in Nigerian politics. The motivation for the retracing of steps is interest. Whether or not a clash of interests will occur with the passage of time depends on Obi’s permutations, which drove him to the desperate coalition, which the All Progressives Congress (APC) has described as a schism of chaos.
Obi left the LP in distress and confusion, which the Julius Abure faction attributed to his style.
The faction, which apologised to Nigerians for giving him the 2023 ticket, said the former governor would not be missed. This may not be true because between 2023 and 2025, Obi was the main issue in the party, its leadership crisis notwithstanding.
The details of the pact that became the driving force for Obi are unknown. Atiku has been chasing the presidency, like a shadow chaser, since the 1993 Jos convention of the Social Democratic Party (PDP). In this dispensation, the former vice president has tried his luck six more times – in 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015, 2019, and 2023 – but without success. Is the Wazirin Adamawa now fatigued or poll weary?
The general feeling is that ADC was borrowed from the original owners for the purpose of realising Atiku’s aspiration. That is why many people believe that ADC is the Atiku Democratic Congress. Is Atiku being persuaded to step down and concede the space to Obi to fly the ticket of ADC in the next general election, while regressing into a status of a dignified onlooker or godfather?
Obi said he decided to team up with ADC in the interest of national unity. Observers were taken aback that the politician who campaigned on ethno-religious platform in 2023 has suddenly turned around to project himself as an advocate of unity.
He goes down in history as a politically unstable and electorally inconsistent actor, whose hallmark is desperation. From being an All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) governor, through his struggle to occupy the number two position as a PDP chieftain, to an LP presidential candidate and now an ADC stalwart, the political roaming in circles is complete.
Obi, like Atiku, lacks the pedigree of a party builder. For a politician who miraculously got over six million votes to fail to build on that novel score and momentum speaks volumes about a deficiency in self-awareness.
That shortfall in perception and dearth of knowledge predisposed him to seeking a rented apartment in ADC when he had the chance to erect an edifice in LP, where he ultimately drew the ire of chieftains as a deserter.
The protracted leadership squabble in the LP was a major test he failed woefully. How would someone who cannot fix his party promise to fix Nigeria, a country of over 200 million heterogeneous people?
But that was also among those inadequacies, apart from the lack of political patience and sound strategy that created a hollow in the career of Atiku and other politicians who inherited the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM) from their leader, the late Tafidan Katsina, Major-General Shehu Yar’Adua, only to allow it to collapse irredeemably. The PDM, a formidable platform, went with the wind because the supposedly arrowheads could not properly invest in its survival. Like Obi, Atiku’s motive is just ambition, and nothing more.
Obi is taking his ‘Obedient’ followers to the ADC. They cannot transform into core party men and women. Since he is only interested in the party’s ticket and not the party itself, the challenge of harmonisation of party structures may not arise. That may be why it is convenient for him to abandon those who actively supported him, particularly the members of the National Caretaker Committee, led by Senator Esther Nenadi-Usman, and the lone LP governor, Alex Otti of Abia State, who has refused to defect along with him.
Where does the defection leave Abure and Nenadi-Usman? Is that the end of LP? Will the factions fight on?
Neither is any cogent consideration accorded the interest of Obi’s 2023 running mate, Datti Baba-Ahmed, who has been his loyal envoy to both the LP and the ADC.
But has Obi been assured of the ticket? He is not known for participating in a competitive presidential primary. He only targets a political party that will hand over the ticket to him without stress. It is noteworthy that ADC’s Publicity Secretary Bolaji Abdullahi said recently that there was no guarantee about an anointed candidate. He also said there was no discussion about how the candidate would be chosen. Judging by Atiku’s antecedents, the fate of the ADC presidential candidate would be determined at the primary.
What is the position of ADC on zoning? If the party zones its presidential ticket to the North, would there not be an uproar in the South because the zone deserves eight years?
If it is zoned to the South, would the North be comfortable with another eight years for the South, after President Tinubu’s first term of four years? The North is conscious of the fact that the promise of a single term is a fallacy. Would the North not show preference for another four years for President Tinubu instead of conceding eight more years?
But how intact is Obi’s support base? The argument is that if Obi’s six million and Atiku’s seven million are combined, they will surpass President Tinubu’s eight million. That was in 2023. Are the dynamics not different today as Nigeria gazes at 2027? Introspectively, in 2019, when Atiku and Obi paired in the PDP, did they defeat the Buhari/Osinbajo ticket of the APC?
The only implication, for now, of Obi’s defection is that the presidential election may strictly be a three-horse race with President Tinubu of APC and flagbearers of the ADC and PDP slugging it out on poll day.
