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By Ogbuagwu Bob Anikwe

Poor Peter Obi. Most people believe he is the face of the opposition come 2027. That includes President Tinubu, Vice President Atiku, and Comrade Sowore each of whom believes that the Anambra politician is capable of upsetting the applecart. The trio have now sharpened their individual strategies to put Obi in his place NOW, ahead of the defining 2027 vote.

Tinubu marvels at how a poorly-prepared Obi was able to attract humongous votes across religious and ethnic divides in 2023. He won’t allow a repeat.

Atiku dreads a repeat of Obi’s ability to withdraw the crucial Southeast vote he needs to win. He has set a trap for him to checkmate a similar outcome.

Sowore is offended that Obi came from nowhere to snatch his youth vote. He is now baiting him with a campaign that will weaken his youth and Southeast support base.

TINUBU is quietly expanding his political footprints in the Southeast. He also mobilised an army of media professionals and propagandists to inflict as much damage as they could on Obi’s pristine image. He succeeded with the first but is failing in the second. In a matter of days, both Enugu and Anambra will quietly fall to the APC. Gov. Mbah will shortly cross over to the ruling party while a frightened Chukwuma Soludo is campaigning for reelection in November with posters bearing his and Tinubu pictures. After Enugu and Anambra, Uncle Emilokan may decide to face Abia next, to ensure a total conquest of the East. He could also show magnanimity by leaving Otti as a token of democratic resistance from the East.

ATIKU, my former boss, believes to this day that Obi played a spoiler role for him in 2023, thereby denying him the best chance he had of becoming president. To take Obi out of the 2027 equation, his group contrived the ADC Coalition and dangled the presidency slot before Obi. It appears the idea was to lure him in and then take him out through the primaries that the Waziri will easily win. That will leave Obi no choice but to either accept No. 2 position and use his influence to attract the Obident vote to Atiku or to leave the coalition. Each option is guaranteed to hurt him politically.

SOWORE is angry that Obi came from nowhere to snatch the youth population that hitherto placed him on a pedestal. Now, it appears he has found his strategy to finally nail Obi – through Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. The forces against Obi are aligning with Sowore on this Release-Nnamdi-Kanu-Now campaign. They will attempt to use the campaign to drive a wedge between Ob and Southeast voters. If Obi joins Sowore’s campaign, they will show the rest of Nigeria that he has always been a closet ethnic bigot. If he doesn’t, Tinubu could use this to drive a wedge between him and his Igbo kinsmen by releasing MNK to Sowore.

What strategy do you think will succeed against Obi? Who will win the 2027 presidential election?

Who will win is a wrong question. As it was in 2023, the real Atiku-Obi-Sowore-Tinubu opposition in 2027 is not WHO but WHAT. Ordinarily, it is voters’ perception of their living conditions in 2027 that will deliver victory to one and cause the defeat to the other three. Thanks to the Obidents, voters have come to realise that they can weaponize their poor living conditions during elections.

However, this weapon fashioned against APC did not succed in 2023. And this is why the perception that Obi is the main opposition needs to be further interrogated.

Casting the winning votes is often not a determinant of electoral victory in Nigeria. Winning vote must be “verified” by subjecting them to digital scrubbing and judicial technicalities before they are released. The institution for application of judicial technicalities to election results is firmly in place and will again be efficiently deployed in 2027. What remains to restructure is the institution for digital scrubbing of election results – to which the President has now turned.

Given this scenario, who still believes that Peter Obi is the opposition in 2027?

Make I finish my akara and pap firsf.