Obi’s Campaign Moves In The North Are Aimed At Shaves That Defy Predictions, To Give Him A Landslide. Here’s How
The Oasis Reporters
February 21, 2023
By Greg Abolo
@gregabolo
@Theoasisreport1
The social media has been awash with a series of predictions on how LP presidential candidate, Peter Obi would perform or fare in the north.
Many of them are utopian. Many more are wrong.
Contrary to beliefs in certain quarters, Peter Obi had been in direct contact with key stakeholders for many years in the north.
He first studied the history, geography and economics of the region. Then social life. As a businessman, he would need to know what jells in the region. Like what the problems are and what the possible solutions could be. He had all that locked up in his brain long before anyone suspected that he would run for office as president.
Therefore when an entitled presidential candidate was saying that the north was not prepared to vote for someone like Obi, there was great bemusement.
Then another Governor in the north did what entitled politicians do. Take the voting Nigerians for granted by making dismissive comments derisively about the people of Southern Kaduna and by extension, Southern Gombe, Southern Bornu, Southern Bauchi, Adamawa, Southern Yobe etc that he called “enclaves”.
The highly despised and humiliated people rose for the first time and gave Peter Obi a rousing welcome.
My visit to Borno today has renewed my commitment to tackle insecurity in the nation as my first priority, when voted into power. In moving our nation from consumption to production, we must convert the vast lands in Borno, and the entire North into productive agricultural uses. pic.twitter.com/YFvBHKboUY
— Peter Obi (@PeterObi) January 28, 2023
The people of Southern Bornu where schoolgirls were captured and sold into slavery or married off by their terrorist conquerors in Chibok were seeing a national politician for the first time. Most governors in the north despise their people. For instance in Southern Bornu, there’s no government presence or development as you would see elsewhere in other places..
Seeing Peter Obi was like viewing a window of development under construction.
In Obi they saw empathy and hope and they felt a sense of renewal ahead. They know that their underdevelopment would be replaced by development because of the openness and compassion that Obi came with.
Those grudging votes they used to give to the entitled politicians in exchange for nothing would go with great hope to Peter Obi.
There’s also another class of northerners who would secretly vote for Peter Obi in huge numbers. The north is currently devastated by insecurity that the entitled politicians have refused to deal decisively with it because it does not largely affect them.
In the north, poor villagers can’t access their farms, or even their huts to sleep in. There are roaming bandits everywhere trading in the currency of fear and darkness. The hunger and kidnapping for ransom that is sadly ongoing in the north is being treated the wrong way. The well known terrorists are always being appeased with millions of naira, yet they keep asking for more from the hapless villagers and the clueless government.
They only pretend to be doing something when elections appear on the horizon, and Gloria Mabeiam Ballason wrote about a particular event on 17/2/2023:
” You have recently been all about your lovey dovey affection for ‘talakawas’; which of them do you refer to? For the avoidance of doubt, here is a summary of your score sheet in the talakawa and governance business:
1. Kaduna State under your administration, has witnessed unprecedented insecurity and deaths. You admitted to accessorizing murders by ‘paying killers to stop killing’ yet in the urban, rural and suburban areas, people and ‘your talakawas’ are either killed, kidnapped or on the line to suffer either of the two dreadful fates“
Gloria is from Southern Kaduna.
Luka Binniyat, a public affairs analyst from Southern Kaduna, north west Nigeria wrote :
“Don’t Be Fooled By APC Northern Govs’ Endorsement, Choice Of A Southern Candidate. See Why!”
NB: This is my personal opinion as any citizen is entitled to, and not that of any group.
I laugh at those sucked in by the cleverly crafted ruse dished out by the Northern Governors’ endorsement of a Southern presidential candidate of their party, APC, thereby leading to the selection of Jagaban Borgu, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, emeritus governor of Lagos State.
The last thing in the minds of these men, including Kaduna State’s master of deception, is the emergence of a Southern President.
No way!
In their thinking, if the APC had decided to field a Northern candidate, that would have made the North to have three formidable presidential candidates. Yes! – because Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso who has a cult following in Kano, Jigawa, northern Kaduna, and other places in Arewa north, is now the assured presidential candidate of the NNPP.
Abubakar Atiku, who is Fulani from Adamawa state, is the PDP’s flag bearer already.
Peter Obi, who is immensely popular in the Middle Belt and the South is the Presidential candidate of the rather ‘dwarfish’ Labour Party. As at now, many who love Peter Obi are unhappy that he didn’t slug it out with the mega dollar aspirants of the PDP.
But today, Obi is the reason for that “patriotic” and “exemplary” move of these governors.
Had the APC picked a Northern candidate they knew that the move would have revulsed the Middle Belt, the South East, the South South and the South West. Power, in the thinking of folks from these zones ought to return to the South, most appropriately, to a Christian.
The APC Northern Governors read this danger. So to them, they have washed themselves clean in the eyes of the unsuspecting Middle Belt and the South.
So they thus did everything humanly possible to ensure that Vice President Yemi Osibanjo, who would have had a fighting chance to defeat Atiku in the 2023 polls, did not get the ticket of their party. They then ensured the victory of Asiwaju Tinubu who Atiku will rout before 11am on election day. For all they care, and which would be glaringly obvious, they have fulfilled all righteousness by giving the South the ticket.
They know that the Jagaban seemingly looks medically unfit for the job, besides certain integrity issues that people whisper about. Mark my words! Tinubu is the “preferred” candidate of Buhari. So the Jagaban is assuredly on the ballot.
Buhari and the northern governors know that in the new Electoral Act, the campaign period has been stretched to 15O days before the general elections.
If you leave three Northern Presidential candidates to contest against Peter Obi, that stretch of time is enough for the Obi team to mobilize supporters and the Labour party will become a behemoth you can’t ignore anymore. It will become too big for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressive Congress (APC) to stop. The South, the Middle Belt and the liberal far north would ensure it.
An alliance of the electorate from the 13 Middle Belt States, the South and far northerners with non-conservative thinking would make it an easy win for the former Anambra State governor.
If the APC puts a Muslim Arewa candidate for the presidency, Peter Obi will inexorably become President and that’s an armaggedon the Arewa north, especially those northern governors do not want to imagine.
It’s better that power remains with the Fulani for more consolidation of whatever agenda Arewa north has started in 2015.
The Arewa elite are not ready to part with power. It serves them better that one of them controls the lever of power and it doesn’t matter which party he comes from”.
