Perception matters in politics. Sadly, Peter Obi has acquired the untoward reputation as a perfidious and nomadic politician. He's viewed as a politician who hates the rough and tumble of party politics and runs away at the first whiff of a crisis.
He's seen as a politician who prefers to nurture and put his faith in a nebulous movement, called "Obidients", rather than build a strong and viable political party. Above all, he's perceived as a politician who shuns internal party democracy and avoids competitive presidential primaries like a plague but hops from party to party seeking a presidential ticket on a platter of gold and thus a ready-made special purpose vehicle for actualising his presidential ambition.
Yet, while the above narratives and characterisations are entrenched, they do not tell the whole story. In other words, there's more to Obi's fluid party loyalty than meets the eye! But let's address the perception first. For when Obi's one-time strongest allies and cheerleaders now scathingly attack him, everyone, including Obi himself, should take notice. Recently, speaking on Charles Aniagolu's Prime Time on Arise TV, Babachir Lawal, a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, who abandoned Bola Tinubu, his longstanding friend, and supported Obi in the 2023 presidential election, described Obi as a "very shifty" person who only wanted a party "where he's the sole candidate". He said although the African Democratic Congress, ADC, bent over backwards and allowed Obi to single-handedly pick the party's organising secretary, which he did, he still left the party once he realised he would have to face stiff presidential primaries.
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Obi cited litigations dogging ADC for leaving the party. But those litigations didn't stop Atiku Abubakar, Rotimi Amaechi and Mohammed Hayatu-Deen from paying a whopping N90mn each to obtain the party's presidential nomination form. A familiar pattern emerges. In 2022, Obi left PDP just before the party's presidential primaries knowing he didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning. He hastily joined Labour Party, which gave him its presidential ticket without primaries. Similarly, this year, Obi left the ADC because he couldn't win its presidential primaries, only to have the Nigerian Democratic Congress, NDC, roll out the drums and gift him its ticket. Inevitably, the perception is that Obi always chickens out of competitive presidential primaries and always gravitates towards a weak party that would gratuitously hand him its presidential ticket like a desperate damsel throwing herself at a suitor. But the optics are bad because any politician who cannot stand the heat of a presidential primary should not be in the political kitchen!
Which leads us to another ally-turned-critic: Dr Datti Baba-Ahmed, Obi's running-mate in the 2023 presidential election. Recently, Dr Baba-Ahmed accused Obi of inconsistency and ingratitude, wondering why, despite getting the Labour Party's presidential ticket "so easily", he couldn't stay to fix the party's problems. "So, if there's a problem in Nigeria, you would walk away?" Baba-Ahmed asked rhetorically, saying true leaders don't walk away from problems. In his defence, Obi said the presidency instigated and fuelled the crisis in the Labour Party because of him, adding that the party only became stable after he left it. In other words, the Labour Party would have known no peace had he remained in it. But that's a specious defence because all Obi needed to do was to stand firm and insist he would not leave the party, which, given his global profile, would raise the political stakes for any state-induced attempt to destroy the Labour Party. But, in truth, Obi hates getting his hands dirty with internal party affairs; he's more comfortable with nurturing a cult-like movement - the "Obidients" - than building a political party.
In 2024, I wrote a piece titled "2027 presidency: Has Peter Obi missed the boat?" (Vanguard, April 4, 2024). I questioned why Obi put his faith more in a movement and less in a party, arguing that he needed both to succeed, just as Emmanuel Macron did before becoming the president of France in 2017 by building both a powerful movement and a strong party. But Obi said: "We promised to build Nigeria; we did not promise to build a new Labour Party." But how, I asked, could a politician build a nation if he couldn't build a party? Even then, early in 2024, long before the presidency's alleged interference became an issue, Obi hinted at ditching the Labour Party, saying: "If we can't change the Labour Party, we will leave them." And he did, without putting up much of a fight, as Governor Alex Otti of Abia State and Senator Nenadi Usman, the Labour Party's dogged national chairman did, to stabilise the party. That's the point Dr Baba-Ahmed was making in his strident criticism of Obi.
But back to the question: why does Obi avoid competitive presidential primaries? Well, to borrow an English idiom, "there's a method to the madness", that is, there's a purpose behind Obi's party hopping. In truth, Obi is not fundamentally averse to presidential primaries. He said he would participate in a presidential primary provided the ticket was zoned to the South. And because PDP in 2022, and ADC in 2026, refused to zone their presidential tickets to the South, Obi decided not to participate in their primaries on two grounds, one principled, the other pragmatic. Take the principled reason first. Obi believes that, on grounds of fairness, equity and justice, it's the turn of the South-East, or the Igbos, to produce the president of Nigeria. He believed that in 2023 and believes it now.
Put simply, Obi is running on an Igbo lokan (It's Igbo's turn) platform. But unlike Tinubu, who unabashedly ran on Yoruba lokan/Emi lokan platform in 2023, Obi is not explicit about his claims because he doesn't want to be seen as Igbo candidate. Yet, the principled reason he refuses to participate in presidential primaries unless the ticket is zoned to the South is his belief that it's the turn of the Igbo, being the only major ethnic group that hasn't produced the president since Nigeria returned to civil rule in 1999.
Of course, several Igbo leaders who supported Tinubu in 2023 and who back him for a second term in 2027 do not agree with Obi; they believe the Igbo are not ready for the presidency and are willing to wait until 2039 after, putatively, Tinubu has completed a second term, and the North has had its eight-year stint. But that's not Obi's stance. Yet, the question for Obi is that if he's pitching for an Igbo slot, why is he voluntarily committing to doing only one term, thereby short-changing the ethnic group? Is it a question of half a loaf is better than none for the Igbo? Surely, if the Igbo can't wait until 2039, which would be 40 years in the political wilderness since 1999, it makes sense to settle for four years now.
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But is Obi speaking for Ndigbo or is his one-term-only pledge self-serving? Pragmatically, thanks to structural barriers, no Igbo can win a major party's direct presidential primaries unless the ticket is zoned to the South, which ADC refused to do. That left Obi with no choice but to seek solace in a minor party that would effectively zone its presidential ticket to the South-East. He found that willing party in Senator Seriake Dickson's NDC, which, last week, zoned its presidential candidacy to the South - read the South-East - for a single term of four years.
As NDC's presidential candidate, Obi would fly the flag for Ndigbo, with a formidable Northerner, former Kano state governor Rabiu Kwankwaso, as his running-mate. Yet, Obi's Igbo-lokan, party-hopping strategy needs more than the Obidient and Kwankwasiyya movements to succeed. Sadly, with Atiku viscerally opposed to zoning the presidency to the South, recently calling it self-defeatist, he can be an obstacle to Igbo presidency in 2027, even though he himself may not win. Surely, Obi needs a strategy for Atiku spoiler effect!
*Dr Fasan is the author of 'In The National Interest: The Road to Nigeria's Political, Economic and Social Transformation', available at RovingHeights bookstores.
