At first they were dismissed as noise makers on social media, derided that there’s no polling booths on Twitter, and shamed for supporting a party without a widespread political structure, but its seems that all the murk hurled at Peter Obi’s young supporters only ends up fanning the flames of their fury leaving Nigeria’s dominant parties running scared.
In the wake of the All Progressive Congress party’s victory at the polls in Ekiti state, which was eked out largely on the back of widespread voter inducement, Godwin Obaseki, governor of Edo state expressed shock that the supposed opposition party, the PDP didn’t even come second.
“How can it be that the PDP not only couldn’t win, they were not even number two. So you can see that something is going on.
“And we do not want this to be a trend. The future of our politics in this country is changing. I don’t know whether you are closely watching what is going on, the level of disenchantment with the existing parties. I’m sure in all our homes here, we have so many people now, who call themselves Obidients. I don’t know whether you have them in your house, Just ask them, which party are you from, they say Obidients.
They don’t want us, they are not talking about APC or PDP, they are looking for alternatives. And they are much, much more, you see all of them queuing for PVCs now. They are not looking in the direction of PDP or APC, they are looking for alternatives.
“And if we don’t make our party attractive, I do not know what will happen in the next election,” he said.
Obaseki is right to worry. Peter Obi’s momentum is sweeping across the Nigerian like wildfire. Young people who are mostly casualties of failed PDP and APC administrations are adopting the cause with a fury that knows no name. It is spurring voter registrations in record numbers testing the competence of electoral umpire.
The sense of a shift is in in that many Nigerians, largely transactional by the nature of their politics, are queueing behind a man, whom a cleric derided for being ‘stingy’, it is seen in unpaid advocacy and campaigns by young people, in the decision by many to refuse to allow politicians use ethnicity and religious difference to distract them.
Obaseki merely said out aloud the colour of the nightmare of Nigeria’s ruling class. Both the ruling party APC and the opposition party, the PDP are losing sleep over the swelling ranks of young people – Obidients -who are determined to retire them.
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Some politicians are expressing their concerns openly, others are paying social media influencers to smear Obi.
On social media platforms, clips of a 2019 interview with Kadaria Ahmed on his decision to invest $50m of Anambra’s money into the shares of a beverage company he also had some shares in, is being twisted to seem like an investment into family business and presented as evidence of wrongdoing.
Politicians like Ned Nwoke and Babangida Aliyu, a former governor of Niger State have taken shots at Peter Obi on the absence of a political structure or lack of name recognition, views that only show up their ignorance about the unfolding political landscape.
According to Obaseki, their children and those who work for them are seeking alternatives. In the past, it used to be the PDP and the APC lobbing insults at each other. Now they seem to be coalescing around a common threat. Even Omoyele Sowore of the African Action Congress (AAC), who scored 33,000 votes in the last presidential election, has taken shots.
Thirty-six percent of registered voters participated in the Ekiti State Gubernatorial elections and analysts say this could be the result of either a lack of enthusiasm based on the poor quality of representation by the political parties or a lack of faith in the political process.
Barely three weeks into joining the Labour party, Obi’s popularity was not on the ballot in Ekiti but it provided conclusive evidence of the power of a third force to cause an upset. The SDP represented by Segun Oni came second with the main opposition party, the PDP bearing in at a distant third.
Analysts say this indicates that people were keener to vote for candidates rather than parties. Nigeria’s political parties are bereft of ideologies and are merely vehicles to attain political party hence it would be perfectly acceptable that a market economy-oriented Peter Obi is the standard-bearer for a Labour party. Some politicians have switched enough political parties to include party-hopping as a hobby on their resumes.
Political wave
The very nature of political waves is cyclical marked by a dramatic increase in media coverage about an issue, an increase in public reactions by political leaders and activists concerning the topic, and an increase in discussions about the issue among the general public according to a study published in Cambridge University Press by Gadi Wolfsfeld.
The study says that political waves are sudden and significant changes in the political environment that are characterized by a substantial increase in the amount of public attention centered on a political issue or event.
After reaching a certain peak in public attention, such waves either die of their own accord or are replaced by new waves. The momentum to elect Peter Obi is assuming the character of a wave and could cause major upsets in next year’s general elections.
Nigeria’s last political wave was in 2015 when buoyed by smart local and international publicity campaign, people were sold a lie that a feeble, insular and incurious former military general who ran aground a creaking economy in the 1980s was the answer to an inept president under whose watch corruption was elevated to the status of state policy.
That wave that swept away Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP from Abuja rode on the backs of young people, many who hadn’t been born when Buhari ran ruled Nigeria in 1984.
Seven years as president with the economy in tatters, spitting out misery and hopelessness, harsh media crackdowns including a Twitter ban, cryptocurrency restrictions, raging inflation and frequent university lecturers strike, young people have awoken to the reality that they risk watching old men with dated ideas rob them of the best years of their lives. They are riding a new wave and it seems foolhardy to dismiss its potency just yet.
The 2023 political season is shaping out to be Nigeria’s longest yet, it may also be the country’s most upsetting as large swaths of Nigeria’s young people who make up over 70 percent of the population seem determined to take back their country from a rampaging political class under the leadership of Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party.
The momentum to retire Nigeria’s old guard is fueled by widespread poverty, unemployment and insecurity that remains pervasive despite billions of naira thrown at the problem.
Increasingly, young Nigerians are saying this is their chance to take back their country. Considering that in the last presidential elections, a paltry 28.6million voters out of about 84million registered voters decided the election, a percentage turnout of 35.6 percent, with Buhari winning about 15m votes, the reality that young voters could decide the election outcome has never been stronger.
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