If you have been paying attention, there’s something happening in Nigeria’s political sphere at the moment that can best be described as a Tsunami.
More than ever before, more and more young Nigerians are tweeting, facebooking, instagramming, whatsApping and tik-toking about politics because of a man called Peter Obi, a former Governor of southeastern Anambra State.
Each day, more and more young people are catching the Peter Obi bug and signing up to his campaign. They are also crowd-funding and putting their hard-earned monies where their mouths are.
The online campaign for an Obi Presidency in 2023 is as vociferous as the offline door-to-door strategy–where young people are donating their flats for Obi campaign meetings, and printing T-Shirts with the words “Obi Kererenke Obi” boldly inscribed on them.
And it’s all breathtakingly organic, visceral and infectious.
This week, electoral umpire INEC (Independent National Electoral Commission) couldn’t cope with crowds of young people in Lagos who besieged registration points to get their names on the voter database for the first time, because of Obi.
There are now strident calls daily on social media platforms and on news websites for the voter registration deadline to be extended, thanks to Obi’s fans.
“I am OBIdient..in fact, I can be Obi Wan Kenobi right now for Peter Obi,” one freckle-faced 20-year-old, who has never voted before, chanted gleefully to this writer at the Tafawa Balewa Square (TBS), where a frenetic voter mobilisation exercise targeted at first time voters, is going on apace.
Around him, a bevy of university students who have been forced to sit at home because of an ongoing strike action by lecturers, applauded in unison.
On WhatsApp messaging platforms, there is nary a day where street, neighbourhood, school or compound groups aren’t forwarding Peter Obi campaign messages and encouraging people to go get their PVCs (Permanent Voter Cards).
Even Instagram, Tik-Tok, Twitter comedians and skit-makers, have hopped on the Peter Obi campaign bandwagon to viral, rip-roaring effect.
At bars, nite clubs, football viewing centers and hairdressing salons, hipsters, millennials and Gen-Zers are campaigning for Obi and sharing leaflets, merches and souvenirs for effect.
Obi’s mantra of prudence in governance, cutting waste and plugging loopholes in the public sector, stimulating production to boost GDP in a country that can’t wean itself off imported crude oil proceeds, and birthing a new nation, have resonated with young people and caught on like wildfire.
Video clips of Obi’s gospel of a new Nigeria, delivered in the past in his characteristic shrill, birdy, almost throaty cadence, continue to make the rounds on social media daily and have been translated to several Nigerian languages for rural folks.
Peter Obi dumped one of Nigeria’s major political parties, PDP, for the Labour Party (LP) on May 20, 2022.
The LP is a smaller, poorer party when juxtaposed with the behemoths that are APC and PDP, and without the kind of spread in wards and local governments to win a nationwide election.
Critics continue to say that Obi and his LP do not have the ‘structure’ to win a nationwide vote and that they are unrealistic and deluded at best, but the man and his growing army of supporters are undeterred.
“Whenever I hear of no structure, my answer to it is simple. The 100 million Nigerians living in poverty will be the structure.
“The 35 million Nigerian youths who don’t know where the next meal will come from, will be structure.
“The elderly, the mothers and fathers, the old ones that are dying or being owed gratuity and pension, will be the structure. ASUU, the lecturers who are being owed, the students that are not in school will be the structure since it is all about the structures of a human being,” Obi said, while receiving a certificate that cements his position as the LP presidential nominee, on Friday.
“I have also maintained that it is people that form structure. The structure belongs to the people and the people of Nigeria have made up their minds to liberate themselves and what will happen in the next few weeks will shock you what Nigerians will do.
“We already have structures across the country, across the states and local governments as well as in the units. That structure will be further ventilated because Nigerians have decided to make a change and this change is inevitable,” he added with some bluster.
Not since MKO Abiola has a presidential candidate unified and galvanised suffering Nigerians this way and spurred them to go get out the votes. Whether the online and offline Peter Obi movement can translate to actual votes–sufficient to beat the monsters of PDP and APC on voting day–remains to be seen.