An open letter to Nigerians desperate for change
Dear Uncle and Aunty Obi-dient,
Despite me sounding a cautionary note over dinner, your optimism and excitement about the forthcoming Nigerian elections remain infectious. And you are right — Nigeria doesn’t need another ineffective plaster as a president. It requires a surgical operation to end the corruption and the killings of the last twenty years. And given our choices for 2023, Peter Obi is our best option. He wants to tackle corruption, and many of us believe he will be less corrupt than the other candidates.
Let’s hope we are right. Let’s also hope he will not be stingy like Abacha was, compared to Babangida. Ultimately, both ran corrupt governments. But one was generous and allowed everybody near him to benefit from the dodgy dealings, while the other kept the looting within his inner circle and hid it well until he died.
Such a reservation is worth voicing, not only because of the Pandora Papers findings but also because Peter Obi has been running for one public office or another longer than would be deemed healthy in many democracies.
After his tenure as governor, he left APGA and joined PDP, hoping for a ministerial post. Then, he tried to become vice president under Atiku — the same man, many of his supporters still regard as corrupt. Since then, he has decamped from PDP to join a party arguably smaller than APGA, namely the Labour Party.
So, who really is Peter Obi, and even more importantly, what is his stance on Igbo marginalisation?
It is an essential question for Ndigbo and all fair-minded Nigerians because he could have started the excellent work he is currently doing years ago as an APGA member. It’s also an essential question because Nigeria is not one nation but many. Its system of governance is lopsided and skewed in favour of the North. And relative to Ndigbo’s official population size and national contribution, the Southeast has borne the brunt of that injustice.
Those in doubt should ask why Peter Obi has been careful to campaign as a Nigerian — at a time it was supposed to be the Southeast’s turn to produce a president? Why is it also that the other candidates remain unabashed Yoruba or Fulani and Muslims — despite the apparent marginalisation of Ndigbo their candidacies represent?
The truth is that any Igbo or fair-minded Nigerian who wants real change and not a mere reprieve must also want marginalisation of any kind, regardless of ethnicity or religion, to stop. Peter Obi’s plans for the economy will, therefore, not be enough to save Nigeria. We also need to know his views on the constitution. To assume we already do is a grave mistake.
He also needs to be more forthcoming about the Pandora Papers’ findings and how he plans to rule with greater transparency as president. Some might ask why, given the other two candidates’ poor track records of integrity. It’s a fair comment. Despite the papers listing ten other Nigerians, the mention of Peter Obi’s name in the report was the biggest surprise to most of us. That tells us something about how the average Nigerian views him.
Still, we need to know his views on the crucial matters mentioned because he presents himself as a new and genuinely different kind of politician from the leaders we’ve had before. We need to know to hold him accountable and ensure lasting change. We need to know because we cannot afford to find ourselves in the same situation we are in now in five years. We would be guilty of not having asked those tough questions before it was too late. Ndigbo, especially, need to know because once they’ve had their Igbo president, any cries of marginalisation in the future would probably fall on even more deaf ears.
Every Nigerian voter has the right to know these things before the election — as is customary in true democracies. Ignoring such questions now because he is allegedly the candidate with the most integrity would be selling ourselves short.
I hope he answers them sooner rather than later. I also hope he lives up to all of our dreams if he wins. Because if he doesn’t, Nigeria will eventually break up.
Your loving nephew,
Obi-tuary
