SIR: The Peter Obi interviews come in a trio of shapes. The first aspect is the recitation of verses of bloated statistics, fixating on the noble feats of foreign nations without showing how to reproduce such feats in Nigeria, and spiting figures to highlight the ugliness of the Nigerian situation with zero attempts to offer holistic solutions to the predicaments.
This aspect of the interviews showcases him more as a passionate critic, rather than the brilliant problem solver he is sold for. While ready candidates give out detailed plans, Obi rarely does that. That is why despite being the loudest peacock among the presidential candidates, and championed as the Nigerian Lee Kuan Yew in the making, not even the most loyal of his followers can mention PO’s plans on, say, how to fix power, transform education, or position the healthcare system.
That Peter Obi is fairly abreast about happenings in foreign settings and can quote figures to buttress his points is welcome; the sole usefulness of knowledge in leaders, however, is in sharpening their insights to map out realistic solutions to the challenges of time—an exercise which, for now, Obi is grossly failing at.
In the rare moments the LP candidate is cornered by TV anchors to proffer a solution to a certain problem hovering in the polity, the magic wand he always throws is investing in whatever sector. Anybody sufficiently familiar with the fiscal state of the Nigerian state would know that there’s simply no wherewithal to invest in everything. But a more pertinent point is that investing in itself is not a solution to any problem. To conflate investment as a silver bullet to every possible problem is to betray a lazy attempt at problem-solving. As much as pouring resources into critical sectors is welcome, the recipe of it is what makes the difference. But as the case is, the plans of Obi are always mysterious.
The second piece at the heartbeat of the Obi marketing strategy is the talks about a formless otherworldly performance while on the wheels of the Anambra State affairs. While his management of Anambra State might not be ungraceful, I believe his administration—an administration under which medical doctors were on strike for 13 months; under which the state university was under lock for weeks because of issues with the state government; and under which no signature project blossomed in the state—could not be regarded otherworldly, or significantly different from other fine performances of some outlier Nigerian governors as it’s promoted.
As advertised by his base, the biggest achievement of Obi’s Anambra was that he left office without taking loans, and with some billions of Naira in the purse of the Anambra State government. This might be nice but is, at a deeper look, no achievement. Good governance is measured by the ability to improve the quality of life and welfare of the people governed. To loftily celebrate the savings of funds that in themselves do not add any meaningful value to the life of the people is to lower the bar for good governance.
Beyond the records of performance, the next hit of the obedient media stuns is the attempt to showcase him as a principled outlier in the cycle of, what his fans describe as, the ‘old corrupt’ Nigerian politicians. Peter Obi is a serial party defector who was amid the old corrupt political elite before finally landing on a socialist party at opposite with his capitalist ideals; he’s a former governor that admitted to investing state resources in business having his family’s stakes; he’s a presidential candidate with unaddressed damaging revelations against him by Pandora Papers. How a candidate, with all this baggage, can be presented as an Iroko tree of integrity and principles in the political arena is a question reason cannot answer.
The thesis here isn’t about whether Obi is competent or not; he might be better than one, two or even all of the candidates based on the qualities you look for in leaders. The thesis is that his assumed ‘messianic’ brand is hugely overrated, that the boundaries between him and most other candidates are largely fluid, that the series of media engagements which his base overhype and point, to propel him as a Den Xiaoping of some sort are but unmistakable cocktails of bloated truth, veiled conjectures, and pointless gabs which should be regarded for what they are: chatters and chitchats.
- Alameen Abubakar,
Bauchi State.