Peter Obi And Treason

 By Obi Nwakanma

Political developments of last week have left many a Nigerian askance, wondering about what might be the endgame for this regime. The current party in government, the APC, is pushing its current agenda of “state capture” with the kind of brazenness and open defiance of public will, never recorded before in Nigeria; not even during military dictatorship. 

*Peter Obi

It would seem to most history-minded people that this generation of Nigerian politicians and political actors learnt nothing, therefore, from the past; specifically from the crisis that led to the 1966 coups and the devastating civil war from which Nigeria is actually yet to recover, 53 years after the shooting phase of the war ended.

Three developments are worth keeping our eyes on: One is the use of Gestapo tactics by the governing party and its candidates to intimidate their opponents. Bola Tinubu has not yet been sworn-in as President, but the methods are already slowly coming to the fore, in the example of a now disproved false flag method.

Alleged APC propagandists circulated a fake phone exchange which they claimed took place between Mr. Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate currently in court to retrieve his mandate, and Bishop Oyedepo, in which Obi is said to have declared that his political fight was a “religious war!” The attempt of this fakery was, clearly, to falsely paint him as a religious bigot, and turn a section of his current massive supporters against him.

The second is the revelation by Mr. Peter Obi himself and his party that he has been threatened and asked to go into forced exile by agents of the government, in a bid to deter him from further pursuit of his mandate in court. This is a startling development. 

The third is the report last week of the current Minister of Information, Mr. Lai Mohammed’s address to a section of the US press in Washington DC, claiming that the elections in Nigeria were free and fair, and were conducted under the law, and that Mr. Peter Obi and his vice-presidential candidate were committing treason by opposing its outcome. This is quite startling, coming from a minister of government and a lawyer to booth, who ought to know the meaning of the word, ‘treason’.

Even so, barring the APC, most Nigerians believe that Mr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party won the presidential election. The 2023 elections were stolen. The truth is stark. The evidence is public. The man, Bola Tinubu, who was declared winner of the election of February 25 by a highly compromised electoral body, INEC, does not have the actual numbers allotted to him, or the mandate of Nigerians, and neither does he, therefore, enjoy the support and adulation of Nigerians.

He cannot walk the streets of Nigeria in the same way as Mr. Peter Obi does, and be hailed or acknowledged by ordinary Nigerians. That is clear evidence about where the hearts and minds of Nigerians reside. 

But Lai Muhammed on behalf of this government and his party went to Washington DC to speak about what is shaping up to be a difficult problem for the current government, which literally supervised this electoral heist: a government with the lowest performance rating in the world; the least credible index of service to the Nigerian people; a government that has turned Nigeria into the “poverty capital” of the world; which has, in eight years, broken the credibility of every institutional authority that made public government once respectable.

It has a legitimacy problem. But it is forcing itself back to power, in spite of the massive mood of discontent in the land, by massively rigging the election in favour of the party’s candidate, Bola Tinubu. Lai Mohammed did not say this to the US press. Rather, he lied that INEC’s conduct of the elections was above board, and that Nigerians have accepted the outcome. Heck no! That is not true. Nigerians are boiling, and the spillover effect of the anger is what most lovers of Nigeria fear. 

If the court of justice fails to transparently conduct the tribunal to ascertain whether or not Bola Tinubu won the elections fair and square, there may be trouble. There may be massive civil disobedience. Let nobody be deceived. Nigerians may fight like hell to retrieve their mandate. 

That was the point made by Mr. Datti Baba-Ahmed when he came on national television to declare, fearlessly, that it would amount to the death of democracy if Mr. Tinubu was sworn-in as President on May 29, 2023 because it would signal that the Constitution is dead. That might is right. It would call into question the legitimacy of the state. Datti Baba-Ahmed is actually right. This declaration is what has rattled the APC and the government. 

The fact is that Nigerians are prepared to speak the more obvious truth, and own that truth, without fear. The fact is that the Labour Party has a massive following currently under the restraint of their party leadership, but who have enough passion, youth energy, and boots on the ground to mount a very consequential resistance. That is why they are now threatening Peter Obi and Datti Baba-Ahmed with treason, and forcing them to abandon their court challenge and go into exile.

Treason is now so fluid in its meaning in Nigeria that the right to protest is no longer guaranteed. Free speech is now a deadly threat to the regime. To protest public injury is now treason. This is very clearly the rise of fascism, and Nigerians will confront it: they will have to kill us all on the streets and rule over only the graves. That is what it means.

Lai Mohammed has threatened the Labour Party with treason for what its vice presidential candidate said, never mind what the APC and its many politicians have said over the years. But it is the classic act of giving a dog a bad name in order to kill it. But this government now has a Peter Obi problem. As it would soon become clear, this dog is not about to be killed very easily. 

This government also now has a legitimacy problem: in the minds of a massive number of Nigerians, the state is under capture, and those currently minding Nigeria’s business are not the legitimate authority on whom power has been democratically delegated. They have stolen Nigeria’s mandate, and Nigerians will stage the “Boys, Oye!” for them on May 29 if they continue to defy the will of the Nigerian electorate. 

This is the great fear behind Lai Mohammed’s address to journalists in Washington DC. But it is important that, as he does his shuttle democracy, Nigeria’s so-called “development partners,” particularly the US government, pay very close attention to the Nigerian streets.

As this government prepares to hand power to a disputed President, even before the courts ascertain the legitimacy of his claims to power, there will be increasing acts of defiance. The fear of most Nigerians is that if Mr. Tinubu is sworn-in before the courts determine his case, he will use the powers of the Presidency, once installed, to influence judgment in his favor. 

Some Nigerians are asking for an Interim National Government on this account, but only if the courts are unable to sit and make proper judgment before the handover date of May 29. It is now considered treason to even ask for a transitional government, where the institutions of state have failed, as they have indeed failed in Nigeria. 

Now that the APC is willing to use all kinds of fascist methods to muscle its way back to power, it must also be willing to contend with serious opposition. Nigerians are human beings, not zombies. Nigerians have fought the colonial regime through the anti-colonial nationalist movement; they fought military dictatorship, and Nigerians will fight any attempts to impose an illegitimate and fascist authority on them. 

The danger of the current moment though is the loss of faith by a great number of Nigerians about the meaning of Nigeria, and about the Nigerian project. The idea of Nigeria has been serially corrupted: every institution of state has been captured to serve not the interest of the Nigerian republic, but the interest of a few. As a result, Nigerians have lost faith in state institutions. 

That is dangerous. Lai Mohammed accuses Peter Obi and Datti Baba-Ahmed of treason. But just to be clear, it is a false flag. In any case, if we look just a little closer, it will become only too clear who are the real perpetrators of treason against Nigeria. They are those who have thwarted the legitimate authority of the state by using incumbent power to subvert the electoral system and seize the mandate of Nigerian people. 

*Nwakanma, a poet and US-based professor, is a commentator on public issues