By Madu Onuorah
The Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, is indeed a phenomenon. Those who are yet to understand there is a mystery behind the man will continue to miss the point about him.
If they understand him, they would have allowed him to be especially after he ran a vigorous Presidential campaign, and successfully persuaded Nigerians to vote for him and they responded positively but for the electoral umpire headed by Prof Mahmoud Yakubu who thought otherwise and declared who the gang wanted.
Having declared Obi the loser, even at a distant third position and directed him to go to court and he accepted and went, yet they remained sleepless ever since.
Seeing or hearing Obi pricks their conscience in such a way that if they have their way he should be extinguished totally from the political scene of Nigeria.
Obi as an irritant and discomforting face to them got to a point where they had to try to persuade him to leave the country and rest. They just couldn’t stomach the man going around the country injuring the conscience of Prof Yakubu and his team and the Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his ruling APC gang of desperadoes.
If not, how else do we explain the peevish reaction to the Good Friday incident involving Obi at Heathrow Airport, in London, United Kingdom? After Obi on his own reported how he was briefly interrogated by a UK Immigration officer for noticing a duplication of him, the media space has been awash with all kinds of suppositions on it. ‘Obi arrested; Obi detained; UK Police apologizes to Obi, Interpol on Obi; Nigeria Government intervenes for Obi, etc.’
Even an excited Online Newspaper in a desperate search for negative information on Obi wrote the UK government but got a disappointing answer that did not meet their expectations.
An excited federal Government official, one Adamu Garba, even tweeted that the government facilitated Obi’s release from their imaginary arrest. A photoshopped picture was even presented to back the tweet showing the head of the Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM) Abike Dabiri negotiating Obi out of trouble. But the Diaspora Commission quickly disowned it and described it as a stunt.
Meanwhile, while all arsenals have been channeled at Obi over the London incident, the man has finished spending Easter with the family, participated in Easter church services in UK Catholic Church on Easter Saturday and at Redeem Church on Easter Sunday, the video of which went viral. And back in the country, Obi has continued with his Charity works in Educational and Health Institutions in Anambra State including attending the wedding of one of his relations and also campaigning in Ogbaru Local Government of the State where the Labour Party Candidate, Afam Victor Ogene was involved in a supplementary election for the House of Representatives seat. It was Obi’s campaign that helped the victory of Hon Ogene who defeated the incumbent PDP candidate, a three-time member of the House and one-time Minority Whip in the House, Hon Chukwuma Onyema, and the ruling APGA candidate whom the State Governor Prof Chukwuma Soludo strongly backed.
So, while opponents are dissipating energy and resources photoshopping pictures and videos and creating fake news on Obi, he is moving on, achieving results. Meanwhile, those chasing him and getting angry for escaping their trap are unable to supply Nigerians with the simple question they are asking, where is the President-elect?
The President-elect told Nigerians when he left the country last month that he was going to rest, plan and from there go to Lesser Hajj in Mecca, in Saudi Arabia for prayer. Since then nobody has sighted him either in Saudi Arabia or any country in Europe. The entry time into Saudi Arabia for performing hajj people has passed and nobody sighted him either in Saudi, France or the United Kingdom.
So, what is coming out as a certainty from all the noise about Obi is that they are all a deliberate act designed to distract and occupy Nigerians, who by now should have been shouting about the missing President-elect.
The clear motive behind the bedlam is basically to demonize Obi in the hope that bringing him into disfavour before the public by stigmatizing him will help solve their problems.
But interestingly, and from what is unfolding, the more they try the more Obi is soldiering on feeling unscathed. To all intents and purposes, these Obi’s asperses are in shock that he was able to dodge trap in London. And being unavailable with option B, they have continued to bemoan and bellyache.