Before His Excellency, Mr. Peter Obi, runs again for president (part 1/4)
“Our policies are peaceful but our methods can’t afford to be less ruthless than those of the opposition … You can’t be less wicked than your enemy simply because your government’s policy is benevolent, can you now?” — Cyril Cusack’s Control: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
The Obi-dient Movement
The struggle by the youth, this election season, to create a paradigm shift by civic and democratic means and usher in a new dawn ended with a dud at the feet of Justice John Inyang Okoro. Okoro, at the head of a 7-member panel of the Supreme Court, had asked Chief Chris Uche (SAN), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar’s lawyer, this revealing question:
“Which one do we rely on?”
Two thousand years ago, Pontius Pilate had asked Jesus Christ something similar, “What is truth?” But Pilate had turned aside before Jesus could answer. Justice Okoro following in the “miscarriage of justice” footsteps of Pilate had shrugged with indifference to whatever answer Chris Uche was going to proffer. It was never an honest inquiry.
With Extreme Prejudice
Apparently, after a combined 17-year-tenure at the Appeal Court and Supreme Court, Okoro appeared confused about our laws of evidence and jurisprudence. In the petition to disqualify Senator Bola Ahmed Adekunle Tinubu for perjury, he needed help to decide which to apply — the administrative letter from Chicago State University which authenticated Tinubu’s certificate to INEC or the sworn deposition by Mr. Caleb Westberg, CSU registrar, which repudiated it. In the end, it was clear that Tinubu’s criminal baggage notwithstanding, the Nigerian judiciary had decided unanimously to legitimize a stolen mandate.
And so they ruled up and down.
Failure to Launch
A New Nigeria is PO-ssible was never consummated, and the buck stops at Mr. Peter Obi’s metaphorical desk. This autopsy is necessary. If you don’t have the stomach to deal with a bitter truth and plan ahead for success, please move along: the Ekene Umenwa/Moses Bliss video is still showing. Peter Obi’s run for president at the fountainhead of the Obi-dient Movement started ahead of the May 2022 PDP primaries when he, Chief Oseloka H. Obaze, Chief Doyin Okupe, and a coterie of associates traversed the land to consult with PDP stakeholders and party operatives. What they were told was that there were school fees at home and abroad waiting to be paid.
PDP Was A Lost Cause
It was going to be business as usual: party nominations for the presidential and general elections would be by auction to the highest bidder. So Peter Obi decided to carry his shi-shiless campaign elsewhere. His conclusion was okay, but his decision to migrate to the Labour Party was an unmitigated disaster. See: Lamidi Apapa’s angry white goatee bristles at my face each time I open Nigerian news online.
I won’t belabour the point except to note this curious fallout: Chief Wole Olanipekun, who was otherwise confident of his “well-equipped in litigation matters” credentials, had not bothered to mount a credible legal defence for Senator Tinubu at the Appeal Court. But he found it necessary to raise the question of Peter Obi’s membership of the LP and his emergence as flagbearer. It was the lowest-hanging fruit, and Olanipekun could not resist himself.
I have issues — if I may — with the strategic process that took Peter Obi to LP. I don’t have any insider access, but he appears to surround himself with brilliant but like-minded associates. In so doing, he screens himself off from the radical fermentation of ideas that can come from outsiders.
Rabiu Kwankwaso
We dodged a bullet with Alhaji Rabiu Kwankwaso. It appears to be the same aforementioned flawed process that brought Kwankwaso so close to seizing this movement. In the end, the collaboration failed because of Kwankwaso’s entitlement complex, and not by way of ideological high minds having a say in the matter.
