Soludo’s sack of sour grapes

With Nigeria sat heavily  on the pyre of politics as the 2023 general elections approach, potshots and cheap political points are to be expected as part of the process that somehow always successfully manages to whip many Nigerians into a frenzy in spite of the widespread recognition by many that the process is a deeply, and perhaps irredeemably flawed one.

  • Elections in Nigeria comes around every four years, and for those for whom politics has improbably become a profession, a career ,a business as well as a  side hustle, every inch of powder is kept dry for the day the political charabanc would come around, bearing in it’s unsightly carriages the clowns who form the core of the circus that politics in Nigeria is.

Thus, whenever elections are around the corner as they  now are with the 2023 general elections which will undoubtedly prove pivotal,those who have long dyed Nigeria’s politics in the wool of desperation arm themselves to the teeth.

For many of them, when they take aim with their bows strung by  bile and bitterness, nothing is too sacred, not even the bonds that bind brothers.

Soludo’s solution of illusions

On November 6,2021,the good people of Anambra State went to the polls to queue under  the headlights  of history and choose who would be their governor for the next four years.

Battlehardened, the people of a state that begun the spectacle of staggered governorship elections in Nigeria, had two scores to settle. The most important was to bring in someone the cap would perfectly  fit   and the second was to heap humiliation on a certain political party which in going for a man who unabashedly held up a torch  while the state burned between 2003 and 2006,was seeking to replicate its shocking performance in office at the national level in the state. Both scores were perfectly settled.

At the end of the polls, Charles Chukwuma Soludo, eminent professor of economics and elite public intellectual, was declared winner.

On 17th March ,2022,he was sworn in as Governor. If the fisticuffs between two prominent Anambra women on that day were an inauspicious  sign of things to come, it appears that the  darkness is well and only  truly beginning.

A wild wild shot

Ahead of the 2023 general elections, former Anambra State Governor, Peter Obi, has emerged as a  genuine contender on the platform of the Labour Party and is proving to be as much a force as the veteran politicians thrown into the race by the ruling All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party which is the main opposition party.

His emergence has been as surprising as it has been disruptive with many Nigerians genuinely hopeful that the  ‘dark horse ’can make a serious dent on the outcome of the 2023 general elections for the sake of  the country.

His popularity has surged across the entire country like a tidal wave, forcing many politicians to take positions for or  against him. Many others have chosen silence rather than risk the ire of Mr. Peter Obi’s teeming supporters who include some of Nigeria’s finest intellectuals home and abroad.

But not Mr. Soludo. Just  days after he dismissively waved away questions over the Mr. Obi’s massive strides while  in office as Anambra State Governor, Mr. Soludo went full throttle for the jugular of Mr. Obi’s aspirations to be President of Nigeria.

In what turned out to be a missive against  Mr. Obi’s aaspirations, Mr.Soludo went on to claim that Mr. Obi was just wasting his time and would never win.

In a region, and among a people whose most strident complaint against  Nigeria is that they have suffered exclusion, Mr. Soludo’s comments have  gone down like a lead balloon

The severe criticisms  that have trailed his attack  on Mr. Obi’s aspirations have betrayed the fact that Mr. Soludo did not do his homework before betraying his hubris.

Mr. Soludo’s divisive comments have also brought the seven months he has   spent as Anambra Governor under harsh  scrutiny.

So far, many of those who have directly witnessed his time in office are of the opinion that he has performed below expectations.

Mr. Soludo has a right to air his personal opinions as every other Nigerian has, however, it would appear that as with many other Nigerian politicians, those opinions are as  self-serving as they come.

Given what Peter Obi and his shot at Nigeria’s presidency mean for Nigerians as a whole, and the Igbos in particular, Mr. Soludo would have been better served in this instance keeping his unpopular opinion to himself.

Mr. Peter Obi is a different kind  of  politician, the kind that is a rarity not just in Nigeria but  in Africa as a whole. Those who refuse to match him idea for idea but instead draw from the quiver of envy and jealousy to oppose him  end up with eggs on their face just as Mr. Soludo.

Kene Obiezu,

Twitter: @kenobiezu

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