“In every age, it has been the tyrant, the oppressor, and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people.”
― Eugene Victor Debs
Nigeria’s Nobel laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka’s jeremiad against the Labour Party standard bearer (2023), Peter Obi, unveiled him as a man on an unwitting mission to tarnish his glorious past out of envy. Since 2022, everything has shown that anybody ready to contend with Obi and the Obedient Movement should prepare for the muddy grounds because it won’t be uncomplicated. An elder and intellectual, Soyinka could have saved himself from all the mudslings thrown at him by people who used to admire him as a hero of justice and fair play. Remember his epic novel The Man Died.
Among the common man in today’s Nigeria, the 2023 Labour Party flag bearer is indisputably the most politically loved. The love for him cuts across all divides…religion, tribe, geography, sex, and class. Obi is also the most politically envied Nigerian within the elite class of politicians.
When you hear the 89-year-old Nobel laureate brutally attacking Obi, it draws from his anger at the rising political profile of the LP candidate who has continued to resonate in the eyes and ears of his enemies.
The expectation was that after the grab-and-run election ended the way it did, Obi was to be downcast and fizzle out with his inextinguishable supporters called the Obidients. Reno Omokri and Daniel Bwala and their ilk were assigned to drown Obi’s profile and subdue the Obidient movement by any means possible. To their shock, rather than deaden Obi, the relevance of the attack dogs has been dwindling. Apparently because of the growing zero-value of these attack dogs and their plummeting social media impact, they had to seek a higher character in Soyinka with his international clout to deal with Obi. The anticipation was that given Prof Soyinka’s leverage, his views would sink whatever fame Obi was enjoying. The supposition also was that Prof Soyinka was the clincher that would drown the irrepressible Obidient group. So the old man entered the fray, saying what in every parameter cannot be convincing to anybody in Nigeria in the last two decades that Peter Obi entered Nigeria’s political space.
By saying that Peter Obi is unfit to rule Nigeria and, to him, Tinubu is better and that Muhammadu Buhari was not fit, the Nobel laureate pitiably reduced his once esteemed strong voice among the discerning minds to that of an ethnic bigot be-clouded by no sense of genuine reasoning. It’s sad and heartbreaking to long-time admirers of Prof Soyinka that politics had to diminish his status to such an irreparable low. To the Nobel laureate’s admirers, curse unto those who dragged him into the boxing ring with neither gloves nor determining his current weight. They merely relied on his old vibrant weight when he was a genuine activist for justice. They did not know that he had climbed down to be an ethnic irredentist. Who will ever believe that the man who once went to prison fighting for justice in Nigeria in his youth will turn around at close to 90 years exhibiting such bigotry? But those who had the privilege of living with their grandpas when they were nearer their departure lounge should not be surprised, because nothing takes its toll on a man as the years. Because of age which Africans deeply respect, an extenuation will still come for Soyinka no matter his current mortifying behaviour.
The question is, why is Prof Soyinka so fixated and single-minded about Peter Obi? Three quick answers will suffice…envy for Obi’s rise despite the knocks he has got, a struggle to help a benefactor who bought him kitchen utensils when he was down [a confession he made himself] and a third, to remain in perpetual opposition to whatever his Egba brother and former President Olusegun Obasanjo is supporting.
Obasanjo unapologetically has supported Obi, insisting he is the only one in the presidential race who can fix Nigeria. So for that, Soyinka had to declare Obi unfit to rule Nigeria to contradict Obasanjo. The Soyinka-Obasanjo feud didn’t start today; we recall how Soyinka’s white hair grew faster when he led an international protest to frustrate Obasanjo emerging as the first African to have been the Secretary-General of the United Nations even before Ghana’s Kofi Annan. Looking back can reveal that the two Egba sons’ fierce rivalry didn’t start with Obi.
If Obi or any reasonable person were to choose between Obasanjo and Soyinka to be a political mentor, many would opt for the former. Obasanjo has made a better choice of picking Obi ahead of all other aspiring candidates to rule Nigeria. Therefore, Obi made a better political choice of having Obasanjo as his mentor. The literature icon’s growing obsession with Peter Obi stems from his refusing to go away after being thoroughly flogged enough to exit the political scene. Instead, Obi is waxing stronger.
The Anambra State former governor was taken for granted the first time, rated very low but it turned out that those who underrated him were wrong. Again he was expected to be tired, disgruntled and exit the scene but he is not. The Obidient movement, an offshoot of his solid campaign for 2023 instead of getting frustrated, is waxing stronger.
Clearly, unable to suppress Obi and the Obidients, the agenda now is to attempt to separate the two. It’s an uphill task to separate both; it would just be like separating Jesus Christ from Christians or Mohammad from Muslims. The Obidient Movement is not a vague or indeterminate body; it didn’t just fall from a tree as an apple or from the sky as the biblical manna. It’s tightly attached to the character and person of Peter Obi, particularly as it relates to his desire to discover a new Nigeria. Wherever Obi goes in his presidential journey, the Obidient goes because, like the flies that follow a rotten egg or faeces, the Obidients are attracted to Obi by his laudable message on how to redeem and rescue their beloved country from political crooks.
There was no Obidient when Obi ruled Anambra State, there was no Obidient when Obi was the running mate of the Peoples Democratic Party in 2019. Obidients arrived in the nation’s political space when Peter Obi decided to run for president and designed a message that got every Nigerian thinking. It is a child of necessity.
Like a good evangelist, when his message overran the political space, penetrating the people’s minds, many began to join him and declared themselves obedient to the Obi doctrine.
These people are not limited to any political party, class, sex or age and are not ethnic or geopolitically driven. Instead, what propelled and still spurring them is the idea, the content inherent in his messages collectively anchored on pulling Nigeria out from consumption to production. Even critical minds bought into it because Obi also came with trustworthy antecedents.
The new Soyinka has allowed ethnic influence to do damage to his glorious past and now finds himself guilty of Albert Einstein’s popular saying, “The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
If the Nobel laureate finds Tinubu fit and proper to rule Nigeria and Peter Obi unfit what else can we say than to sympathise with the once-upon-a-time epitome of the struggle for justice being reduced to an ethnic jingoist? The literature icon deserves our sympathy because good drama episodes start well and crescendo to their peak when the curtain falls.
When one’s glorious morning and afternoon do not reach a climax in the evening, something is fundamentally wrong. Whoever or whatever dragged Soyinka’s evening to this low should be condemned for the damage. What the Obidient stands for and by Soyinka’s antecedents he should be a protagonist, a torchbearer among the Obidients, not an antagonist.
Truly, many of them didn’t choose to be activists as it was, they were activated. They could no longer stand on the sidelines and watch their beloved and blessed country so needlessly brutalised by criminals in the garb of politicians. At some point, we should choose to accept what we don’t like and try to walk the talk to stem it. Anybody who thinks that the Obidient Movement is a passing phase should rethink, it’s an idea that will even go beyond its progenitor, Peter Obi.
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For the oppressors who think they will hold the nation down perpetually, they should note Booker T. Washington’s words, “You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.” The Obidients have come to stay, they may be in the tunnel now but have already sighted the lights at the end. A great and new Nigeria is possible, God helping.
