2027 Mega Coalition: What Peter Obi, Obidients Must Do – Chidi Amuta

In his today’s column entitled: “Stampede among the opposition,” veteran journalist Chidi Amuta wrote of the Obidient Movement Worldwide:

The case of Mr. Peter Obi and his host Labour Party belong differently. Obi has remained the most consistent and orderly voice of the opposition, especially in the post-2023 election season. Mr. Obi has hinged his opposition voice on systemic irregularities in the Tinubu-APC regime. He has been insistent on harping on the neglect of funding and prioritization of healthcare, education, and poverty alleviation in the policy mix of the Tinubu presidency. Not to mention the disastrous security landscape and dastardly economic management profile of the administration. The major headache of the ruling party with the Obi version of opposition is the role of the Obidient Movement in the Obi political factor. It is not the Labour Party per se.

While the Labour Party remains a minority party controlling only the lone state of Abia, the Obidient Movement is an amorphous popular movement with an intangible horizontal structure that has been difficult to track and control.

The Obidients are everybody who disagrees with the status quo, every youth who rejects the politics of business as usual and the bogey of ethnic factionalism in Nigerian. There is literally no ward, local government, state or national structure to bribe, buy, or systemically destabilize.

The Obidients are a broad spectrum of Nigerians spread across the length and breadth of the nation in no particular pattern.

They are people with shared belief and shared values. Those shared beliefs happen to run counter to the dominant doctrine and creed of the ruling party and traditional Nigerian political doctrine of “anything goes for as long as we win”.

The apparent formlessness of the Obidients phenomenon is what equipped them to ambush the Tinubu party in the 2023 presidential elections. They shocked Lagos, shook Abuja, swept the South East, South South, and almost took the North Central.

The formlessness of the Obidients equipped them to stage these surprise political ambush operations, which was a major upset in that election. Therefore, on the scale of opposition threats, Peter Obi and the Obidients pose by far the more lethal and credible threat to the political status quo going forward.

In an attempt to penetrate the inscrutable mien of the Obidients, the Tinubu-ethnic high command floated a kite only a fortnight ago. Chief Bisi Akande, known Yoruba chieftain and Tinubu-APC political gadfly went on the social media to allege that the Obidients movement was behind the “EndSars” revolt of 2020 which shook Lagos and the rest of the country. According to this latest fabrication, the “EndSars” revolt was manufactured by the Obidients in faraway United States and ‘imported’ into Nigeria with the sole aim of ending Tinubu’s political career, hence the revolt made landfall mostly in Lagos and the location of the Lekki Toll Gate.

Yet, it is widely known that the “EndSars” revolt was a nearly spontaneous uprising of Nigerian youths against rampant nationwide harassment of and brutality against Nigerian youths by the SARS unit of the Nigerian police. Obviously, Mr. Akande’s recent fabrication is an attempt to criminalize the Obidients by tainting them with a subversive tar brush so that they could perhaps be branded a treasonous ‘terrorist’ organization by a pliant NASS and over compromised national security establishment.

It is therefore proper that Peter Obi and other Obidients have risen to speak out against Mr. Akande’s myth making by challenging him to substantiate his claims. The task before the Obidients movement in the light of this is to deepen the sources of the strength that led it to dazzling success in the 2023 presidential elections.

Of late, however, opposition to the Tinubu-APC hegemony has showed up in a more consequential quarter – from inside the APC itself. My friend Nasir El-Rufai, former Kaduna State Governor, has been quite busy politically of late. In addition to battling his local opponents in the state, he has openly attacked the APC hierarchy and political leadership at the national level openly. Specifically, El-Rufai has pointed at the intellectual hollowness of the APC leadership as the source of its policy incoherence and bad governance in the country.

Tinubu’s resident hounds have quickly accused El- Rufai of a ‘sour grapes’ mentality, insisting that he is being critical of the party and the government because he was unsuccessful in securing security clearance to get onto the Tinubu cabinet. The man has stubbornly stood his grounds. He has insisted that he will carry on with his opposition spirit but within the party. This is a clear indication of imminent cracks within the walls of the ruling APC party.

Soon after El-Rufai’s face off with mainstream APC, former Transportation Minister, and first runner –up in the last APC presidential convention, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi spoke out at a democracy conference in Abuja. His contention was that Nigeria’s political culture is essentially Machiavellian in a rather devious and even violent manner. Nigerian politicians will kill, maim, steal to secure, and remain in power. He indicated clearly that those expecting Tinubu to voluntarily hand over power to them are being delusional. He reiterated the standard Machiavellian dictum that power is never voluntarily given away but must be violently snatched.

This assertion has thoroughly upset the Tinubu power establishment. They have condemned Amaechi for advocating violence in politics. Specifically, Tinubu’s Minister of Defense and former Governor of Zamfara State, Mr. Matawalle has come out to criticize Amaechi’s perspective. The federal government has also spoken out against Amaechi through the many minions in the Abuja state house.

An interesting response has emanated from the Tinubu camp on the swelling opposition currents against the administration in the countdown to its mid-term. Staunch Tinubu acolytes have reminded opponents of the man’s hidden strengths and track record of power absolutism. In a viral Facebook post about four days ago, Mr. Joe Igbokwe, an unrepentant Tinubu devotee, reminded those opposed to Tinubu’s second term of the man’s arsenal of political assets, which include tenacity, ruthlessness, huge resources, preparedness and experience. What Mr. Igbokwe dared not openly mention is, of course Tinubu’s stupendous wealth, which implies an awesome war chest of cash that can be deployed to submerge any and every opposition in the country at any moment.

The present state of the exchange between the incumbent Tinubu power formation and the opposition indicates a less than clear picture. The opposition parties are in a flux and uncoordinated state. At the level of their own internal party dynamics, these parties are in a state of perpetual calamity. At the level of policy divergence from the ruling party, we can hardly identify the opposition parties as different or divergent in any substantial way from the incumbent calamity, which has literally ruined the country.

The possibility of an internal split within the ruling APC is a latent possibility. It is clear that the Tinubu faction, which is the incumbent authority in the land, is a conservative prebendal money-grabbing faction of the APC. It has no intellectual or ideological content or focus. The more enlightened social democratic and progressive wing of the APC is the arm with people like El-Rufai, Amaechi, Osinbajo, Oshiomole, etc, as main voices. They were excluded from the power center soon after the Tinubu victory.

In the final analysis, Mr. Amuta opined that:

The only option open to the opposition political forces in the country ahead of 2027 is a serious structural and electoral coalition. This should consist of elements of the PDP, Peter Obi and his Obidient Movement, and the alienated progressive arm of the APC.

The Labour Party should be discounted. It does not exist as an objective political reality except as a weak link in the destabilizing arsenal of the incumbent authority. The new opposition coalition must however aim beyond 2027.While it can upstage Tinubu and his rabble in the immediate 2027 contest, the coalition must redefine Nigerian politics in a manner that incorporates more serious Nigerian technocrats, academics and civil society leaders as party members and think tanks.

The current stampede in the opposition camp is a positive development. It should point opposition politicians in the direction of the task ahead. For them to sit back and think that their isolated noise making will end the Tinubu infamy is the height of self-delusion. The work ahead is serious and tasking.Tap Here for the Full Story