By Femi Fani-Kayode

Let me make this clear from the outset. I am a member of the APC and a supporter of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

This contribution does not in any way derogate from that and my analysis is more of an academic and intellectual exercise than anything else.

I am NOT a supporter of Peter Obi and I have NO intention of becoming one. I am however interested on what his supporters represent and stand for and that is the subject of this essay.

They are worthy of my attention only because their rise and relevance in the political configuration of our nation, just in a matter of weeks, is meteoric and phenomenal.

In order to counter and defeat them or to keep them in their place we must at least attempt to understand them and figure out how their minds work.

The following are my findings.

Those that are the supporters of Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate, are known as ‘Obidients’ and they are EVERYWHERE.

Those of us in the larger political parties like the ruling APC and the opposition PDP, treat them with contempt and ignore them at our own peril.

The truth is that they are far more dangerous to our collective cause as a ruling class than many of us can possibly conceive or appreciate.

Only the discerning can appreciate this and know precisely where this whole thing may be heading.

They may not have structures or elected representatives in the legislative and executive arms of Government but they have IDEAS and VISION coupled with a clear ideological and philosophical bent which can and will  endure for far longer than mere political platforms and structures.

Unknown to them as well as virtually everyone else, therein lies their power. As they say, an idea whose time has come cannot be stopped.

Long after we are all gone they will still be here because structures and political alliances rarely endure but IDEAS and VISION last forever.

Again they will outlive and outlast us all because they are not a political party in the true sense of the word but rather a growing national movement which scales and spreads across ethnic, religious, political and regional lines and traditional boundaries.

They also represent a generational and paradigm shift which is increasingly attractive to many and they are bound tightly together by a common purpose, common cause and common objective: namely to rid Nigeria of the old order and usher in the new.

That is really what they want to do and that is the primary and strongest source of their inspiration and motivation.

They are far more dangerous to what the French describe as the ‘Ancien Regime’, the old political class and the entire system itself than anything we have ever seen before because most of them, bar their leader and a small handful of political tried and tested veterans and old war horses around him, are NOT politicians and have never ventured anywhere near the political arena or the circles of power.

In the main they are an innovatively aggressive and frightful array and association of angry and determined young men and women who clearly have the courage of their convictions coupled with the audacity, fury, daring, rage and firm resolve of those that were involved in the Endsars protesters and the fiery footsoldiers that effected  the 1917 Russian Bolshevik revolution led by Vladimir Iliyich Lenin.

There is also something Rawlingesque and intimidating about them.

That is to say they are like the late, great and mighty son of Africa and leader of Ghana, President Jerry Rawlings, who also led a successful revolution in his country in 1979 and who, on his second coming in 1981 when he toppled yet another Government said, “if there is no justice there can be no peace!”

That is the spirit that is in the Obidients and that is what moves them.

Yet though they do not like to hear it their chances of winning the presidential election next year, short of a miracle, are very slim and deep down they all know it even if they refuse to publicly acknowledge it.

Despite that they are determined to fight to the end, hope for the best, work hard and give it their best shot and, of course, therein lies their victory.

In this game courage is the key. As they say, ‘he who dares wins’. Again as they say, ‘fortune favours the bold’ and these young people are both daring and bold.

That they can challenge the status quo and vie for the sacred and awesome power that has been shared by the two major political parties or their ancestral variants over the last 62 years is commendable in itself. I am not part of them but I certainly commend and applaud their efforts.

They too have a right to fight for their rights and future and to be heard. They too have a dream and a story to tell and we must never begrudge them that.

Yet if the truth be told they are not only interested in winning an election but, perhaps even more importantly, they are interested in making a profound and defiant statement, registering their protest against the status qou and the powers that be and triggering and engendering a full scale, comprehensive and all-embracing social, cultural and political revolution.

They want a real and fundamental change and not a fake one. They want to pull the whole house and system down with everyone in it and rebuild a new one in their own image, with their own values and on their own terms.

Most important of all they want to see the back of those of us that are in any way associated with the old order or that have been in Government or the corridors of power at ANY point in time over the last 62 years.

That desire and sentiment is the force that is driving and propelling them and that is kindling their fire and swelling their ranks.

They are like the Robspiers and the Marats of the bloody French revolution between 1789 and 1799 whose battle cry was “liberty, equality and fraternity”, who brought an end to the French monarchy, Royal family and nobility, chopped off their heads and established a proud and strong new order and proud Republic.

Like Robspier’s tiny cabal of French revolutionaries they are led by a small cell of intellectual and idealistic hardliners and are bolstered, girded and supported by a volatile, massive and increasingly dangerous support group and power base who threaten violence and hurl insults at their perceived detractors at the drop of a hat and as a consequence of years of pent up anger and frustration.

If they ever get power many heads will role and many of today’s and yesterday’s leaders will run into exile or go into hiding.

This is especially so of those who have something to hide or who have skeletons in their cupboards.

That is what makes them so threatening and I repeat, those of us that are in the larger political parties or that are members of the existing and ancient ruling class underestimate them, ignore them and display disdain for their firm resolve and rising anger at our own peril.

Most of my political associates, friends and colleagues across party lines tend to dismiss them with contempt.

They regard them as being inconsequential and argue that they only exist on social media. I beg to differ. I see them in the streets and I see them in the Churches.

I see them amongst my staff and amongst those that regard themselves as being amongst the oppressed and downtrodden.i see them amongst the professionals and those thst are bankers, lawyers, doctors and artists.

I see them in the North, West, East and South. I see them everywhere and not only on social media.

I see them as being a very powerful and potent rising force which, if properly managed, will develop into a major political power over the next few years with a strong ideological and electoral foundation and massive structures.

That is the potential that they have and that is how dangerous they can be.

The sooner those of us that are in the larger political parties get off our high horses, display a little humility,  try and understand their mindset, reach out to them, take them more seriously, appreciate their anger, restore their hope, make the necessary concessions and try and abate their rage and rising angst the better it will be for us all.

They may not have today but if we do not play our cards right they may end up having tomorrow.

May God help us all.

Fani-Kayode was a former Minister for Culture and, later, of Aviation under the President Olusegun Obasanjo Administration

By Amanze Obi

My friend and colleague, Segun Ayobolu, has joined the infamous clan of journalists and writers who are demonizing the Igbo on account of Bola Tinubu’s presidential aspiration. I find this regrettable, especially in the light of my belief that these gentlemen, as cosmopolitan as I thought they were, were incapable of this level of incivility.

But I know that Segun was conscripted and fed a lie. He must have been taken in by the antics of those for whom Igbophobia is a pleasurable pastime. I dare say that the views he expressed in his recent article on the Igbo and the Peter Obi presidency are hardly original to him. They are bits and pieces of prejudicial narratives on the Igbo hammered into shape by promoters of hate and purveyors of falsehood. Like many others who have mischievously tied Obi’s presidential aspiration to his Igboness rather than his personality, Segun outlined many reasons why he is scared stiff of a possible Obi presidency. None of them, strictly speaking, is about Peter Obi . All of them border on Igbo stigmatization and jaundiced perception by many a non-Igbo Nigerian.

Segun alleges that the Igbo have appropriated Peter Obi’s candidacy and have, by so doing, poisoned his aspiration. He accuses Obi’s supporters, who he imagined are predominantly of Igbo ethnic stock, of being abusive and indecent in their conduct. He goes further to say that Obi’s presidential quest will be hurt by Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB’s separatist agitation. Then he went back in time to rehash stories about the January 1966 coup and how the Igbo wanted to use the Aguiyi Ironsi regime to enthrone Igbo hegemony in Nigeria.

Segun also said he is worried about a possible Obi presidency because it will bring about another round of Igbo ascendancy as was the case under the President Goodluck Jonathan administration. According to him, the Igbo were unduly favoured under the Jonathan presidency. That is not all. Segun said he is also apprehensive about the disposition of the Igbo who describe Lagos as “no man’s land”. He is worried that an Obi presidency will afford the Igbo the opportunity to seek to realize their expansionist ambitions in Lagos.

I must say that I am stupefied by this catalogue of negative ethnic profiling directed at the Igbo. It is much more disturbing when it is spewing forth from non-Igbo journalists and writers who are friends with some of us from the Igbo nation. Why do those we call our friends recklessly deride the Igbo without qualms? It is strange that they do not care a hoot about how their jaundiced opinions about the Igbo will affect the sensibilities of their friends and associates from the Igbo race. I can hardly come to terms with this disposition because I cannot possibly write, for instance, in condemnation of the entire Yoruba, without being mindful of how my friends and associates from that part of the country will feel. I will not do so because no people or group can be classified as good or bad through and through. It is always a mixed bag. For this reason, what is sensible to do is to take on individuals or groups and deal with them on the basis of their individual merits or lack of it rather than lump an entire race together and sentence them to the gallows. Should the Igbo go through this stigmatization because one of them wants to be the President of Nigeria? I do not think so. Those who are subjecting them to psychological warfare on account of this are being insensitive and inconsiderate.

Regrettably, this kind of mindset is driven by familiar prejudices. In Nigeria, a different standard of judgment is usually reserved for the Igbo by their traducers. That is why when an Igbo sets up a newspaper, Igbo critics will quickly dismiss it as Igbo newspaper. If an Igbo man is at the helm of affairs in a bank, the bank is written off as Igbo bank. This derisive tag holds true in most professions. It is usually easy and convenient to give the Igbo a bad name. For some, it is a sport; a pleasurable game of sorts.

This long-standing prejudice is what is being visited on the Peter Obi presidential project. Those who have an axe to grind with his quest are not facing him directly. They are not trying to tell us about his personal deficiencies that make him unsuitable for the office he is seeking. Rather, he must be written off for the simple fact that he is Igbo. They are simply saying that the Igbo have sinned and come short of the presidency and Peter, their son, has also sinned in like manner. In other words, Obi must suffer collateral damage for the sins of the Igbo, whatever they may be. This is silliness of the worst order. I do not expect this level of prejudice from those who ought to be above board.

Why must the Igbo be judged in this manner? Why are those criticizing Tinubu not dragging the Yoruba into the fray? Tinubu is being judged according to his own merit. In other words, Tinubu and his Yoruba ethnic nationality are different entities. Each can carry its own cross without infecting the other. But in the case of Obi, he is one and the same thing with his Igbo ethnic group. This selective characterization is very unconscionable.

In fact, it has become axiomatic to say that Nigeria has Igbo problem. That is why resentment for the Igbo has become a way of life in Nigeria. Anything or situation that appears favourable to the Igbo is maligned and given a bad name. We saw all of that in the run-up to the presidential primaries of the major political parties in the country. The Igbo had demanded then that the presidency be ceded to them in 2023 for reasons of equity, justice and fairness. But all manner of counter-narratives, most of them jejune and prejudicial, were advanced to shoot that down. Not even our brothers from the South West who were beneficiaries of that concession saw any sense in the Igbo demand. At the end of the day, the two major political parties, the APC and PDP, ignored the Igbo roundly and fielded candidates from outside Igboland. But antagonists of the Igbo are not done. They are taking another step further by transferring the aggression to the Peter Obi candidacy. It is all in the bid to undermine the Igbo. Rather than allow Obi to run the race freely as a free Nigerian, detractors are trying hard to reduce the national appeal he enjoys to an Igbo affair. If painting the Igbo black and tying Peter Obi to that stake is the campaign tool that his detractors have fashioned against him, someone needs to remind them that negative ethnic profiling is not a campaign strategy. Rather, it goes to show that those who have adopted this cheap blackmail have neither a superior argument nor a viable alternative.

The Tinubu supporters are really making a mistake by making the Igbo and Peter Obi the focus of their campaign. They should borrow a leaf from supporters of Atiku Abubakar who are concerned about issues of good governance, rather than dissipate energy on negative ethnic profiling and bigotry.

Obi, PhD, a former Imo State Commissioner for Information, former Chairman The Sun Editorial Board, is a Columnist with The Daily Sun