See Why Peter Obi Was Tweeting By Mid-night, Plus What The Act Implies

"As campaign for the Edo governorship election on 21st September 2024 comes to an end today, troubling comments continue to emerge. One party admits to having packaged fake leaders in the past—who knows what they offer now, perhaps expired ones—while another insists it is a do-or-die affair.

"At Labour Party, we offer genuine leadership built on competence, capacity and compassion. For us, elections are not war; they are opportunities to present authentic leadership and drive meaningful development.

A new Nigeria is POssible! -PO"

That's a tweet Mr. Peter Obi shared at 2 minutes to mid-night yesterday.

First off, for Nigerians who have eyes to see, this clearly shows that the man actually loses sleep over the Nigerian situation. It's not just proverbial but literal. It's obvious from the tweet that Obi was at pains to make the tweet symbolic by sharing it on the day the campaigns closed and could scarcely get a moment to do so until the day was almost ending.

Next, this tweet reminds me of a proposal I've been trying to make to the Obidients which is this: The Obidients should either have their own political party or Peter Obi should run as an independent candidate in subsequent elections. I prefer the option of launching an 'Obidient' party. Once that is done, the party constitution inspired by an Obidient manifesto, would stipulate how members elected on its platform should conduct themselves.

Why do I say so? See a promise Obi is making on behalf of someone who, based on past experiences, has 50/100 chances of cross-carpeting to APC in one year of his governorship in case he wins, and Obi/Obidients are going to be helpless about it if it happens! 

"At Labour Party, we offer genuine leadership built on competence, capacity and compassion. For us, elections are not war; they are opportunities to present authentic leadership and drive meaningful development".

Or, even if Olumide Akpata remains in the Labour Party as the Governor of Edo State, can Obi/Obidients determine or even influence how he would govern the state for 4 or 8 years to any considerable extent? 

To put this into perspective, how many of the politicians elected under the Labour Party using the Obidient Movement in 2023 can be said to be truly outstanding in making the kind of impact the Obidients want for the country? For me, apart from the deep corruption culture that has eaten into the fabric of the Nigerian society, it's because there's no Obidient-inspired structure to control the elected leaders to any extent once they climb up there.

In Nigeria, people use political party structures to rise into top political positions but the party (including the people in the party) they used to rise do not have the power to determine their governance and political moves afterwards, which often makes nonesense of party affiliation in the country's political system. I remember Mrs Aisha Yesufu once making a sagely one-liner in one of her tweets that "party loyalty is a burden! It is worse than an abusive marriage"...

 

How true! And, if it is true, it's even much truer for every genuine Obidient in the context of such a corrupt society as Nigeria is.

On The "Troubling Comments" The Tweet Talks About

To be honest, while any sane person should appreciate Mr. Peter Obi's civil approach to politics, even Nigerian politics, sometimes he needs to be more aggressive, or at least outright, in his manners. For instance, in the tweet here under discussion, the Obidient Movement leader mentioned "troubling comments" made by two political parties during the #EdoDecides campaigns, BUT HE FAILED TO MENTION THE PARTIES THAT MADE EACH COMMENT.

For me, this is a disservice because the public is now left to find out for themselves who the respective parties are (guesses may not do the job well enough). My question for Mr. Peter Obi here is: If any chieftain of the Labour Party had made such eggregious comments, would those other parties have spared him and his party a bit? So, why is he being so politically correct as not to tell us the exact parties in question so as to help in informing the choice of Edo people at these auspicious moments while making media reporting easier and more transparent?

I'm going to have occasion to write on this in greater detail, but for now, let me quickly point out how this is affecting the Obidient campaigns in very adverse ways: One of Robert Greene's "48 Laws Of Power" recommends that, in politics, you should use every means at your disposal to crush your opponents completely. While someone like Peter Obi might not subscribe totally to the Machiavellian principles of Robert Greene, there are things he and his followers need to learn from them.

For instance, while they may not subscribe to using "every means" at their disposal to whittle down the influence of the opponents, they should very seriously consider using "every fair means" maximally in this direction of crushing the influence of the opponents.

So far, both Obi and the Obidients are not getting this aspect right. Let me make this point more graphically with just two cases in which I featured prominently over a year's period: 

When Professor Soludo  Wrote An Anti-Obi Article

When Professor Soludo's article, History Beckons And I Will Not Be Silent, rent the air on November 14, 2022, I read it through and immediately realized how much damage it was going to constitute on the camps of the Obidients if nothing serious was done about it.

So, I was literally forced to respond to the article. After working for about 24 hours, I was able to write a rejoinder against Soludo's article which I am certain demolished most, if not all the accusations he made against the person of Mr Obi and his administration as the Governor of Anambra State.

I immediately sent the rejoinder to several national media platforms via their official email addresses but, unfortunately, after about 48 hours, it was obvious that none of them was going to publish it - I guess it was because I couldn't pay as much as Professor Soludo could. Frustrated, I went to the Labour Party office in Agbor, Delta State, to ask them to help in pushing the rejoinder, but the response I got was far from encouraging.

Therefore, as a last resort, I published the rejoinder on Google Doc and made a video version of it and began to share it on social media since I hadn't started Awake Digest Magazine then. My hope was that the Obidients would be happy to push the rejoinder based on the feverish euphoria around the candidacy of Peter Obi at the time. Unfortunately, after I succeeded in getting up to 800 views for the video, it was obvious that a good percentage of the Obidients weren't disposed to sharing the video or the document further until the elections came and went.

I remember some Obidients then accusing me of "chasing clout". Many of the Obidients were even feeling as if they had already won the election against my persistent warning that we would do better by continuing to see ourselves as the underdogs in the fight. Today, you know the rest of the story.

It now pains me deeply to look back and realize that the Soludo article probably played the single most damaging role in whittling down the initial gains of the Obidient Movement and continues to do so, as the antagonists continue to quote it erroneously to substantiate their claims. I'm sure that this wouldn't have happened - at least not to the degree it did - if a similar number of Nigerians who consumed it also consumed my rejoinder to it.

Again, I'm still surprised that until now, none of the more prominent Obidients has made any considerably detailed effort to counter the Soludo article. Where you wouldn't make a positive difference in a particular direction, and neither would you promote such an effort made in the said direction, we might be pooling our resources, but they will hardly form a river, let alone an ocean.

As A Former Presidential Aide Makes A Full-time Career Out Of Attacking the Obidient Movement

Reno Omokri is a former Nigerian presidential aide who is also a successful social media influencer with up to 2 million followers on X. A very celebral and cunning fellow, Reno has been taking enormous advantage of his privileged digital reach to foment attacks against the Obidient camp, including using deceptions, psychological control, and outright lies.

It's a pity that Reno is single-handedly making so many inroads into the Obidient camp, including by using points from the Soludo article which I already supplanted adequately in my rejoinder. But that's not the main issue now.

The main issue I want to mention about Reno now is a recent event which, like the Soludo case, oncemore indicates why the Obidients need to be more aggressive, even desperate, if they will ever succeed in enthroning a government at Aso Rock Villa.

One of the strategies Reno is using against the Obidient Movement is to try and make the Tinubu Administration look far more credible than it actually is. I hope to explain this in more detail in another occasion, but here's a recent case of this to buttress my point at the moment...

In a bid to whitewash the Tinubu Administration, Omokri recently went as far as launching a dishonest smear campaign against a past government he served as a presidential aide. For example, in one case, he mentioned that Nigeria was averaging 5 plane crashes per year at some point during the Obasanjo civilian administration. To make himself believable and escape responsibility as usual, Omokri applied his signature ploy of asking to be fact-checked. He even promised to give $10,000 to whoever could fault him.

Before this, I had exposed Omokri's deceptions a number of time via this magazine. But this time, I saw his promise of a financial reward as an opportunity to make him pay for those deceptions. Therefore, I fact-checked him, found his claim false, and published my fact-check report on both YouTube and Google Doc, and also wrote an article on it here on this magazine. 

I informed Omokri about this a couple of times via X mentions. But, not only did he ignore the mentions, as I would later discover, he blocked me on X as he is known to do to anyone who tries to expose his deceptions and then deleted the tweet...

Again, like in the case of Soludo, I made effort to share the fact-check report - alongside Omokri's attitude to it - with Obidient audiences. 

But, surprisingly, the Obidients don't seem eager to help in getting one of their arch opponents punished for his lies - at least, help to make his deceptions known, even if, as one comment said, "Omokri has no money to pay". Omokri paying the money, is it half as important as his damaging deception getting exposed? At least, let it be known that he lies in favor of the Tinubu Administration and against his former master, makes promises to make the lies look like true, but fails to fulfill the promises when he is debunked. But no, Obidients - like their principal - are too civil (for me, cold) to do that.

Does this attitude depict a group of people who are desperate enough to see Nigeria escape so many ills bedevilling it? How can you produce a President while refusing to use some of the most potent opportunities you have to stop those who are bent on stopping you?

What Edo People And Nigerians Should Do About The "Troubling Comments"

While Mr. Peter Obi is yet to tell us which party made which "troubling comment" and while anyone may know the parties involved or may appear capable of making intelligent guesses, WE NEED TO KNOW EXACTLY who made each comment. See why...

This country is degenerating to the most appalling levels where we claim to have a democracy but our so-called leaders keep showing openly that the people do not matter at all. And this downward spiral will persist until every value we hold dear is eroded, which will make our future generations spit on our graves for letting them fall off the committee of humanity (yes, that's where we are headed!). This can only happen to the extent that we the people let it happen.

Or, why should someone asking to be employed by the people dare to say to the employers' (ie. the people's) hearing that getting employed at last is a do-or-die affair? Again, if a political party has admitted openly to "having packaged fake leaders in the past" then, it's certain that the current leaders in such a party remains fake because party leadership is a continuum, and fake leadership couldn't have purged itself of its fakeness at any point. Or, how could it?

Therefore, once such parties that made such comments are revealed, NIGERIANS SHOULD DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO RESIST THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH PARTIES EVER TAKING UP ANY LEASERSHIP ROLE OVER THE COUNTRY OR ANY OF ITS SECTIONS ANYWHERE OR ANY DAY. After all, nothing could make it clearer that such parties don't intend to provide - or are not capable of providing - the kind of leadership the people need.

Or, aren't Nigerians tired of suffering already? Aren't Nigerians tired of having the future of their children endangered by a band of thieves who are not even hiding? Why should Nigerians continue to be passive while getting pushed into deadly ditches again and again? Why can't today's Nigerians get up and really fight for the welfare and honor of their families and future generations, and be worthy ancestors to them?

Other Implications Of The Peter Obi Tweet Here In Question

On a less savoury note, while the tweet reveals Mr. Peter Obi's excellent work culture which is a much needed quality for whoever becomes Nigeria's President if any meaningful progress must be made, I think that this work rate is getting excessive. I remember recently, after Obi tweeted about his feverishly packed weekend, a series of his followers advised him to have time in his schedule for quality rest:             

The tweet on which this article is based again reveals that Obi is not getting enough time for quality rest, reflections, and prayer and it affects his composure from time to time. Imagine being awake at midnight after such a hectic day! No matter his level of energy, such a habit must be affecting him in very uncanny ways. Notice, for example, how he used a full-stop where he should have used a comma...

While someone might try to trivialize such gaffes in speech and writing - and possibly acts and actions - it gives Obi's detractors opportunities for undeserved but damaging attacks that actually influence less thoughtful members of the public in their numbers while reducing the level of impact Obi wants to make on people and the society.

Therefore, anyone who has a one-on-one access to Mr. Peter Obi should please prevail on him to take these pieces of advice from his concerned followers serious enough. Otherwise, he would get to suffer damaging burn-outs which can even stop him from achieving his overall goal for the society at large. 

Thank you for your time and attention. I know I'm not perfect and therefore could have missed to state some of my points as YOU would consider okay. Thus, I'm open to YOUR personal contribution to this important heartfelt message. You can make such a contribution at the comment section below 👇👇👇, here on X, or here on LinkedIn. Thanks.

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Desmond Chinedu Nweke  is the Founder/CCO of Awake Digest Magazine. A good governance crusader, Desmond is a writer and a content marketing strategist by profession. He supports his activism via his paid services.