Warri — So BJ was indeed typing all that time! It was worth every minute of the wait for him to finish. His, as has been pointed out, is expectedly and quintessentially a classic Marxist intellectualising of the just concluded electoral ritual we all witnessed -- directly or remotely -- even when styled as counter-intuitive reflections. The shadow of the Marxist-scientific framework was always going to loom over his thoughts, I'm sure he will agree, under whatever rubric he adopted. As should be, even when the actions and utterances he examined, in their populism, pretend to escape their ideological provenance. Two responses have anticipated mine: Femi Aborishade's (almost wholly, I could just adopt it!) and Ike Okonta's for correctly identifying BJ's theoretical framework. As salient and convincing as BJ is (always is), I couldn't escape the feeling of something not said or given the requisite attention. Populism was the theme necessitating his choice of a counter-intuitive approach but it seems to me he didn't dwell enough on it. Aborishade has pointed out this lapse, so I'll only buttress it with my own perspective.
Right from the start, I knew that Peter Obi had captured the deep angst and also the hopes of the great army of disenchanted and disgruntled Nigerians who instantly saw in him their hero. But what was the reason for this? It certainly wasn't due to Obi's record of solidarity with workers or organised labour, the poor, generally, or the middle class groaning under an unrelenting burden and being cast into the lumpen proletariat every passing day. The army of youth who volunteered for him is too young to know of how well or badly he performed as governor of Anambra State many years before they started paying attention. And if they googled him or asked their parents, they would know that Obi, far from being a friend of progressive causes, of democracy, in short, was rather on the side of Arthur Nzeribe and the thwarting of MKO Abiola's mandate in the June 12, 1993 elections; that Obi was running-mate to Atiku Abubakar under the platform of PDP in the 2019 election, a mere four years ago; and, speaking of the present, that his entry into, and take-over of the Labour Party reeks of rank opportunism of the carpet-bagger and piratical order, especially with his reluctance to adopt, nay, include the party's manifesto in his own campaign platform.
So, what turned Obi into a hero, messiah even? Surely, it wasn't, as Aborishade asserts and I agree, Obi's promise of turning Nigeria from a consumptive to a productive capitalist economy, even if of the neo-liberal sort. He hadn't shown that in any convincing way with the Nnewi-Onitsha homegrown industrial model as a two-term governor of Anambra State. By contrast, his rival, Bola Tinubu, laid the groundwork for modernising the economy of Lagos State, the inchoate beginnings of which are already visible. Moreover, Obi hadn't and still doesn't demonstrate his mantra of producing rather than merely consuming by importing and selling every manner of article made in China or anywhere but Nigeria in his very successful NEXT megastores. It dawned on me that Obi got his following the same way candidate Buhari got his in 2015: totally disgusted with President Jonathan and the Peoples Democratic Party, especially with Boko Haram effectively governing North-east Nigeria and advancing on Abuja and the Middle Belt right at that time, it was any person but Jonathan and certainly not PDP. All that was wrong with Nigeria was summed up with the word CORRUPTION. And here Buhari's spartan discipline and the fact of his not being tainted with scandal (whatever may be thought of the N2.8 billion farce during his time as Federal military commissioner for petroleum or his tenure as head of the Petroleum Trust Fund), and this despite having been a former military governor and head of state, instantly made him the one to be trusted with custody of our perennially mismanaged and stolen resources. Indeed, many, including this writer, had to perform great feats of ideological contortion to endorse him, a good number of them turning single-issue voters. Corruption was eating Nigeria alive and if Buhari slayed or subdued only that hydra-headed monster, then he would have done the country an immeasurable good; he would be a hero. Whoever came after him could then begin the actual task of building a productive nation.
How does this relate to Obi? Well, he became a hero overnight. Literally on one of the days before the PDP convention when he announced that he was withdrawing from the race for its presidential ticket as he would not bribe or buy delegates. Money, preferably denominated in dollars, was the name of the game, with the ticket invariably assured to the highest bidder. He would not give shishi! It is no wonder that this became something of his unofficial campaign slogan. To the mind of the long-suffering masses, the problems of Nigeria begin and end with massive and systemic corruption, exemplified by politicians. And, politically speaking, it starts with the parties' conventions at which the presidential flag-bearers are chosen -- and, to a lesser degree, at state party congresses during which governorship candidates are (s)elected. It goes without saying that Obi endeared himself to a wary and angry populace with this show of incorruptibility. And they were ready to follow him wherever he went. It happened that Dr Pat Utomi, who was already vying for the Labour Party ticket, stepped down and brought him to take it on a platter of gold. But Labour Party, which would have been a curious choice for Utomi and Obi, both being unapologetic believers in the shibboleth of a "productive" neo-liberal capitalism, wasn't so curious in the end as it was merely a ladder, a means for Obi to snatch the ticket entitling him to join the race to be president. And they knew, as we all do, that in the final analysis, the viable parties are not different from each other in any ideologically significant way. Otherwise, we would have to ask how many times Obi has changed ideology from the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA, which he swore never to leave until death did him and the party part), to PDP, and now LP. But what is perhaps even more important, in the light of my argument, is that ideology or commitment to a party's manifesto and programmes is a distant consideration, if at all, to the electorate who, for the most part, has neither seen nor read the various parties' manifestos, and would follow a candidate on whom it has placed all of its hopes all the way, even outside a party, if our extant electoral law allowed for independent candidacy. And that critical section of the electorate had placed all of its hopes on Obi, the person and not the party, hence the name they gave themselves: Obidients, evoking an inchoate personality cult more than a movement.
Why is this important? Because the idea of a productive capitalist economy is not something peculiar to Obi: Atiku -- who not only had chosen Obi as his running-mate in 2019 but was inclined to do so again as a self-assigned task of preparing him to be the first "executive" Igbo president -- and Tinubu also had the production-over-consumption mantra in their campaign manifestos. Indeed, Tinubu not only demonstrated it in his time as Lagos governor but also said as much in his acceptance speech at the APC convention. I think it can be safely argued that Obidients weren't motivated mainly, even if partially, by Obi's promise of a productive capitalist economy. In my interaction with several Obidients, I asked if they would have so passionately supported Obi were he running under APGA, his party as governor, or PDP, whether or not he bribed delegates in order to be nominated. The answer was a near-unanimous no: APGA was not a viable option and they associated all that is wrong with Nigeria since 1999 with PDP and APC.
It became clear to me that Obi's popularity was because of his perception as an incorruptible politician, the one who does not give shishi, and so the one who could be trusted with the national treasury and by careful husbandry, would invest the humongous savings in tackling the problems of the country, unemployment being top of their list. By contrast, Tinubu was perceived as the symbol of corruption. It didn't help that while Obi was quite literally an unknown to the army of youths, and even some of the older Obidients, every aspect of Tinubu's life was out in the public domain, given how ubiquitous and influential he has been from the "June 12" (1993) days to his time as governor of Lagos, the cynosure of all eyes in Nigeria, down to his pivotal role in forming APC and installing Buhari. Meaning that every failure of Buhari and APC tainted Tinubu who, in addition, was seen as having put Lagos in his pocket. He was the bullion-van man, and no surprise that in the general looting and burning that the EndSARS protests degenerated to, rioters took their anger out on entities associated with him. It is part of my argument that the Obidients I spoke with had no knowledge of the fact that the first bullion-van scandal did not have to do with Tinubu but -- wait for it -- Obi! Many will remember, I hope, that incident of the arrest in Lagos of a bullion van with about N250 million in it, said van having come from Anambra State while Obi was governor. Nor did the Obidients I spoke with care that Obi had a company incorporated with the initials of his and his wife and children's names in a tax haven, the money destination of choice of mostly persons with something to hide, as the Panama Papers revealed.
The parallel was unmistakable. As with Buhari, the people were willing to ignore any foibles or worrisome facts as long as the candidate's personal attribute of probity and prudence seemed undeniable. While Buhari was apparently just living the life of a poor man, relatively speaking, Obi seemed to display traits of a miser, being evidently a well-to-do businessman, a billionaire perhaps, with interests spanning retailing, farming and reported part-ownership of a brewery and a bank. It is why I dubbed him Peter "Nwana" Obi after that anecdotal character in Chinua Achebe's Chike and the River. "Aka-gum," to use the Igbo colloqualism but in a nation of shamelessly thieving politicians, this becomes an attribute to celebrate, worthy of a hero. He won't steal and he won't let anybody steal, was the dominant response from the Obidients. And that, if nothing else, was good enough.
Then there was the significant factor of APC's Muslim-Muslim ticket which turned Christian pulpits across the country into rallying points for the crusade to save Nigeria from the assured victory of Boko Haram and the Islamic fundamentalists terrorising every part of the country, creating panic and doom while leaving a trail of blood and tears through the incessant Fulani herdsmen's war to take over farmers' lands across the country, not to mention mass kidnappings from the Chibok girls to the Abuja-Kaduna train tragedy. Not least was the needless augmentation of the mass misery already being endured by the masses through the ill-planned and worse executed naira redesign and exchange programme of the CBN, launched literally on the eve of the election. Simply put, the Obidients wanted APC out of government while PDP wasn't an option. And that meant Obi was the chosen one, anointed by the churches, though it is unclear if Vice President Osinbajo might not have had the halo over his head had he got the ticket instead of Tinubu. Actually, some did say they would have rooted for him but as matters stood, it was clearly a case of anyone and any party but APC/Tinubu, just as for the majority of the voters it was certainly not PDP/Jonathan in 2015. It is clearer to me as I write that issues and ideology were a secondary consideration, if at all, for the Obidients. I should add that by this, I mean ideological clarity regarding the role of a party --and a Labour Party, in particular, whose flag their hero was flying -- and the expected commitment of a candidate to its platform, as opposed to a personal or emotional identification with him. At any rate, Tinubu's case was worsened by his health condition and the viral videos that circulated in the never-sleeping ether.
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It is in the light of the foregoing, merely amplifying Aborishade's and Okonta's observations, that I think the productive capitalist economy mantra of Obi was a secondary consideration, if at all, for the majority of the Obidients who didn't care about the fact that the manifestos of all of the three viable candidates -- of APC, PDP and LP -- were quite similar, there being no real class differences between and among them. But in saying this, I have to repeat, I do not take anything from the salience and vital importance of BJ's reflections from a Marxist intellectual perspective. I am, in fact, particularly glad for that slanted counter-intuitive angle of vision, something we are not accustomed to doing, as if it were a shame! But Marxists are good historians, of the past as of the unfolding present, and we shouldn't be shy to take the counter-intuitive path of non-classic Marxist analysis, even if we would be prone to make mistakes, especially while grappling with current events. Our errors can always be corrected.
Ogaga Ifowodo, lawyer, poet, scholar and activist is a member of APC's presidential, Delta State gubernatorial and Delta South senatorial campaign councils. He wrote from Warri.
