ON SOLUDO’S EXCORIATION OF PETER OBI’S FAKE PRESIDENTIAL BID – JESUTEGA ONOKPASA

Vide and altogether quite bland reaction he apparently intended as a riposte to Anambra State Governor, Charles Soludo’s most revealing but similarly devastating take on Peter Obi’s fraudulent presidential bid, one of Obi’s minions, a Katch Ononuju, claimed Soludo’s comments “will not and cannot dent Obi’s image and popularity which the Nigerian youths have given to him”, whatever he meant by such kindergarten drivel.

Indeed, according to Ononuju, Soludo’s critique only served to reveal Obi as “a national project”. While Ononuju can of course feel free to keep deluding himself, even at his age, he is not at all likely to succeed in fooling that many Nigerians with this entirely lame attempt to defend his principal.

Far from being any kind of “national project”, Peter Obi’s presidential bid to absolutely nowhere, is, at its very core, merely a wholly misguided, pitiably misdirected and most rabidly ethnically based undertaking, predicated on truly comical political naivety and powered by unconscionably rude, uncouth, belligerent and altogether most unwholesome attitudes to people of other ethnicities and religious persuasion by his supporters. However desperately  its marketers try to masquerade it in pan-Nigerian regalia, their woefully deplorable approach to politicking invariably exposes the miserably sectionalist slant of Obi’s campaign.

Ononuju even had the temerity to assert that Nigerian “youths are supporting Peter Obi because he’s the most competent and trustworthy candidate and the only one amongst the candidates that we can hold accountable”. While his language only serves to expose the arrogance and predilection for falsehood that frames the Obi campaign, there is, of course, absolutely nothing about Peter Obi even remotely indicative of any accountability, much less trustworthiness on his part.

This is a man, the entirety of whose puplic personae and political posturing is a most elaborative edifice constructed completely out of lies. Peter Obi is Nigeria’s number one importer and a man who has never manufactured a single thing in his entire life but seeks to fool Nigerians he is just the right man to move our country from what he keeps pouting as “consumption to production”! A pathologically stingy, conceited and self adulating man who imports crap from China and “sells supermarket” wants us to believe he is just who we can bank on for our country to be able to compete with his dear Chinese customers!

While Obi was still fully in the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, barely months ago, he actually attended Atiku Abubarkar’s presidential declaration with his most irritating permanent and obviously fake smile fixed on his face, even while posturing as Atiku’s rival for the presidential ticket of the same party! It was of course only after Obi realized he would not get either the presidential or vice presidential ticket of the PDP that he migrated to Labour. This is not a man to trust – this is a questionable character to flee from!

Bayo Onanuga recently pointedly wrote off the Labour Party as a mere subsidiary of the PDP. It is also clearly a platform that has miserably lost its way. Indeed, with a budding Nazi of a presidential candidate, an amalgam of “Yahoo Boys” and secessionists at its vanguard, and with a noisy rabble of ethnic jingosts and empty-headed intolerants leading its Gobbelian campaign, the Labour Party has completely putrified into a most pathetic excuse for a political platform.

While Peter Obi is going absolutely nowhere, even as Soludo, a man of inestimably higher intellect, has pointed out, Obi, on his part, certainly cannot be that much of a dullard not to realize this. Truth is, he just happens to be way too narcissistic to care even as he misleads the nitwits aligned with him on a wild goose chase that will take them and their false messiah anywhere but into Aso Rock.

Like their fellow jokers in PDP, who believed Atiku could actually become President of this country by simply stealing the turn of the South to produce our next President, having most maniacally breached his own party’s constitution on zoning and power rotation between the Northern and Southern halves of this country, Obi’s Disobedients are finally beginning to see the handwriting on the wall even if they may not be interested in smelling the coffee as Soludo has exhorted. Indeed, quite a few of the bumpkins who, months ago, had been similarly muddy-headed enough to see a path to victory for Obi are finally and inexorably becoming compelled into the unavoidable realization that there is simply no stopping the All Progressives Congress, APC’s, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

In desperation they are now increasingly and ever more desperately resorting to rumour mongering and the peddling of fake news on a humongous scale while Tinubu, on his part, remains completely unperturbed, quietly going about the real political hard work that gets candidates elected and will get him into the Presidential Villa months from now. Of course, Obi and his Disobedients are but a flash in the pan. This election will come and go. Tinubu will become President and life will go on, even as Soludo has said.

Onokpasa, a lawyer and member, All Progressives Congress, APC, Presidential Campaign Council, writes from Abuja.