As the presidential ambition of Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate in next year`s election, continues to gather steam, his opponents and their supporters have increasingly been at the receiving end of some electronic thrashing from his supporters who have woven themselves into an ubiquitous ‘ Obidient’ movement that stings like a million wasps.
Camping on social media, his supporters, many of them young, high-flying professionals in their own right have been unsparing of the malaise eating up Nigeria and those who peddle this malaise.
Many of those who have woven themselves into the whirlwind ‘Obidient’ movement that is threatening to rip off the rusty roofs sheltering those who continue to reap from where they did not sow in Nigeria, are clear about their targets.
A young wave.
Among those who have taken Mr. Obi`s side is are many young Nigerians at home and in the diaspora who have left no one in doubt whatsoever that they are thoroughly disgruntled with a country that has simply refused to work.
His supporters cut across religious, ethnic and generational lines and those who have dismissed them as disgruntled ethnic bigots from Southeast Nigeria are waking up to the cyclopean tragedy of their mistakes.
In Mr. Obi`s ambition, many Nigerians are finding the options starved them by other contestants.
Mr. Obi`s detractors have been quick to point out that many of those fronting the former Anambra State Governor formed the vile vanguard that shredded Nigeria during the EndSARS protests of 2020.
However, in a country of selective and amnesic recollection of events, history has already carefully entered in its journal those bloody October 2020 days when young Nigerians some of whom paid the ultimate price at the Lekki toll gate as those who holding Nigeria to ransom to let the country go.
There is no doubt that piercing pain from the lingering wounds of the EndSARS movement is providing fuel for the fire of those knitting the nightmare that is now causing some of Nigeria`s wiliest veterans stomach cramps.
A shapeless nightmare
For the main opponents of Mr. Peter Obi, the waves he is making and the excitement he is generating is a cause of great unease. Many of them have betrayed as much when they have had the opportunity to speak.
Many of them have repeated ad nauseam that Mr. Obi has no structure and without structures cannot expect to win an election of this magnitude in Nigeria.
Many of them have spoken dismissively of the relative obscurity of the Labour Party and the fact that it has no structures across Nigeria.
In his defence, Mr. Obi has been steadfast in saying that all one hundred million Nigerians who remain stuck beneath the international poverty line make up his structure.
It is true that Nigeria is a vast country both in terms of size and diversity. If the country is stretched to breaking point now, it is because for many years, those entrusted with managing the country have done a desperately poor job.
Fortuitously, some of those who have brought Nigeria to the wilderness where it is today are in the race with Mr. Obi. And unwittingly, their past indiscretions in not fixing the country when they had the opportunity to do so is providing his supporters with ammunition for his campaign that is already upsetting the applecart.
It is proving providential and even ironical that it is out of the presidential ambition of a man who supposedly has no structure that a nightmare is shaping up for some of those whose confidence that they will win the race to Aso Rock is rooted the vast networks and financial vaults they have built over many years by nothing but corrupt patronage.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
