I would wish that these PDP irritants from the Southeast spare me all these lamentations about how Peter Obi’s presidential aspiration rubbed off badly on Southeast’s political agenda, going forward.
I had wanted to keep quiet and watch to see if some of them would begin to speak reasonably. And the only thing any reasonable PDP member from the Southeast owes Ndigbo is an apology. They are the most unreasonable and myopic set of politicians; the Southeast has ever seen.
The Southeast chapter of the PDP had an opportunity of ensuring that Peter Obi got the PDP ticket, or at least got to the convention and put up a very good fight, but all of them were either running around Atiku, Tambuwal, or Wike. Not for anything, but for either money or whatever they thought these individuals could do to help their political aspirations in the future.
Some of them built their hopes so much around these other politicians that they allowed themselves to be used by Wike, to ensure that Obi lost the PDP structure in his home State of Anambra. They were used to make Obi understand that there wasn’t going to be a fair playing ground in the PDP primaries, hence, the man’s decision to leave.
It was PDP members in the Southeast that told us that Obi was a featherweight. I remember a meeting I had with a Senator and former minister from Anambra, I told her to leave Obi alone and face her campaign.
I even promised to help her design a campaign strategy that would insulate her from the impending Peter Obi wave. She dismissed me. Even a documentary work I did for her, she refused to pay for it.
She thought me too arrogant to have told her things she didn’t want to hear and for bluffing her proposal for me to support the PDP candidate. Like most Anambra PDP leaders, she promised Atiku that they were going to deliver him in Anambra. Well, the results are out.
One of my greatest joys in this election is that Obi proved the PDP wrong. Obi avenged Southeast for PDP. It is clear today that if PDP had rallied around Obi, we would be sewing asoebi for Obi’s swearing-in today, and the logo on the asoebi would have been an umbrella all through.
PDP leaders in the Southeast are myopic and slavish. Tinubu put up a strong following in the Southwest because Makinde and most members of the G-5 from the Southwest threw their weight behind him. Here in the Southeast, the G-5 members were neither here nor there. Thank God, they were consumed by the Peter Obi wave.
Imagine a situation where Enugu and Abia State governors aligned with Peter Obi openly from the onset. We would have got more than two million votes from the two States alone. In Anambra, these PDP candidates, if they weren’t blind to reality, would have formed a common front to ensure that the LP mopped up every single vote in the State.
Peter Obi campaigned more vigorously than any other PDP presidential aspirant. He went around the 36 States of the Federation and the FCT talking to PDP delegates on why they should vote for him as the PDP presidential candidate, but most of the PDP leaders who are today complaining were ordered by their masters never to attend Obi’s consultative meetings.
They all stayed away. Some of them collected money from Atiku or Wike to hold one kangaroo summit or the other, to confer legitimacy on the abandonment of rotation and zoning arrangements in their Party’s Constitution.
Peter Obi left the PDP because it was made obvious to him that the Party wasn’t ready for a free and fair primary. He was told to his face by many PDP leaders, especially, those from the Southeast that he couldn’t win any presidential election.
One Senator who has deservedly retired from politics even described him as a “kindergarten politician.” Well, we have been shown by the outcome of this election who the kindergarten politicians are.
When Atiku picked Obi as his running mate in 2019, I know a number of these PDP leaders in the Southeast who protested against that nomination. In 2023, none of them who backbit Obi was deemed suitable to be Atiku’s running mate.
Instead, they were all happy to work for Ifeanyi Okowa, from the South-South as the Vice-presidential candidate instead of working for a presidential candidate, who was not only their brother but was also unarguably, the most competent and most prepared presidential candidate of all the candidates.
Peter Obi has not only redrawn the Southeast political map, but he has also redrawn the Nigerian political map. He did not run this election on a Southeast ticket but on a Nigerian ticket.
He won the election so resoundingly, as Nigerians from all walks of life voted for him because they believe in him. He is undoubtedly the face of a new Nigeria and the face of a new political arrangement in Nigeria.
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While I am confident that we shall not take the brazen robbery of our electoral victory, sitting down, I must say that I am very proud of Peter Obi, so far. If with all the manipulations and mutilations aimed at drastically reducing his votes, he still beat all the other candidates by winning in more areas than the other candidates, then, it is only someone who is chronically daft and delusional that would not know that a new Sheriff is in town, as long as Nigerian politics is concerned.
A NEW NIGERIA SHALL COME!
- Credit: ONWUASOANYA FCC JONES
Disclaimer: “The views/contents expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of Onwuasoanya FCC Jones and do not necessarily reflect those of The World Satellite. The World Satellite will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article.”
