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By Chuks Iloegbunam

Whoever believed that politics operated only on certainties? Or that imponderables were never factored into any of it? The Nigerian experience is blatant. It placed a spreadsheet before all comers and delivered new truths. A loudspeaker who previously believed that he was the custodian of all the answers, jetted at public expense from Abuja to London, where, inside a studio, he nestled in accustomed comfort for a long-scheduled media interview. However, he soon discovered to his chagrin that his buttocks had gone into a disagreeable embrace with a spikes-matted platform.

“Suddenly becoming talkative like weaverbird/Summoned at offside of dream remembered,” to quote from the first movement of Christopher Okigbo’s ‘Siren Limits,’ acrimonious voices of political certitude rose in unison. Peter Obi obviously had a hand in the fiasco. Mr. Obi lived in London for decades, and, during that period, probably struck a friendship with Al Jazeera’s Head-to-Head anchor Mehdi Hassan. Which was why Obi, the puppeteer, manipulated Mr. Hassan into distorting a programme configured for Daniel Bwala’s adulation of his Master Strategist and converting it to an inquisition. How else could it be explained that, whereas Barrister Bwala expected questions on the white man’s “discovery” of the River Niger to centre on Mungo Park, Hassan dubiously elected Richard Lander as his focus?

Other certainties have been tumbling on each other, justling for prominence. One of the most innovative of these certainties has already announced the victor of a presidential election that is ten months hence. After all, their victorious candidate already has 32 of the 36 State Governors on his flank. Further, the man also has the disciplined forces, the electoral umpire, and the Judiciary in his cavernous pocket. More than all else, the man’s financial war chest is gargantuan enough to buy up the planet’s leading political parties, including India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)! In this surrealistic world of certainties, it never occurs to its proponents that a man could own the whole world and yet suffer the loss of his soul.

To those who may listen, a lesson. Nothing is fully counted, not even votes, until everything, including votes, has been counted by the One that instituted counting. Sometimes, voters refuse and say “NO” to any more of old, recycled garbage. Oftentimes, people regularly characterized as morons take it upon themselves to repudiate and denounce the slanderous tag to rebuff inducement and intimidation. Such people know that Bwala flunked the Head-to-Head examination because even the most gifted salesman would have an impossible time advertising deodorized ordure. Nigerians are suffocating from the acrid stench of disarticulated political leadership. People weep about the multidimensional poverty afflicting the land. People rue the nation’s crippling debt overhang that has hit an unprecedented N153.29 trillion. People lament the loss of the anti-corruption war last “waged” around 2015 when one monster claimed that, “If Nigeria doesn’t kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria.”

The bitter pill of national ruination is better served without arcane notions and terminologies. Bwala’s man promised constant electricity. He said that, if his promise went unredeemed, people should never again vote for him. Well, from 2023, power supply has been at its worst since the Amalgamation, with the national grid collapsing every millisecond. The situation is so abysmal that the self-professed Sango has collapsed into the bosom of solar power for recharging his cellphones and his consort’s hairdryers. It is like the Police, whose duty is to protect society, barricading themselves inside a shrine for a deity’s shield. Why should this bizarrity earn anyone another vote? The man had claimed that insecurity under President Jonathan signified the PDP’s unfitness for leadership. Today, national insecurity wears a coven-branded hat and blows an ear-tearing whistle. The country has become a vast playfield for bandits, kidnappers and terrorists to roam with impunity, but with less than a word of concern, compassion, commiseration or condemnation ever coming from the man and his privileged, nepotistic cabal. What temerity that he seeks the elongation of his gulag!

Of course, the reason is electoral fraud! Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin said, “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.” That is why, despite 2023’s electoral reality, the country continues to wallow in hunger and want, despair and despondency, divisions and possible implosion. The opposition must stand up to be counted. Stench festers from a mound of excrement because those it is poisoning, lack the courage and common sense to tip over it a heavier mound of earth. The opposition must decide. It must expeditiously assemble behind a recognizable face with integrity. It must choose between disintegrating over who should be a presidential candidate and playing the patriotic card for the salvation of a long-suffering people.

Today’s central opposition figure is Peter Obi. Shortchanged by the ADC, the party could be staring its Nunc Dimitis in the face. With him in a commanding position, the masses would rally for peace and progress to be given a chance. It is on account of Peter Obi’s immense electoral potential that month after month and year in, year out, he is being subjected to the most virulent of campaigns aimed at bringing him low or knocking him down completely. But he remains strong and still stands tall, if only for the reason that Nigerians deserve better than the coarse and depersonalizing dessert of injustice, incoherence, incompetence, inconsistency, insincerity and insecurity being forced down their throats. Mr. Obi has absorbed barrages of calumniation with equanimity, showcasing his resilience. As fire tempers gold, he has emerged from all the tirades and invectives better positioned to lead Nigeria out of the doldrums with a team of forward-looking citizens.

To extirpate the unwarranted and objectionable status quo and dredge water from the current national political aridity, patriots and principal elements of the ADC must make sacrifices. Only the selfish will posit personal elevation over national salvation. The ADC should zone the presidency to the South. The option speaks to equity, impartiality and justice. The North has had a surfeit of national leadership as it is. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has himself fought his battles. Some insiders claim that this foremost politician’s repartee whenever relinquishing his presidential ambition is tabled is that it is his constitutional right. But he will breach no constitutional provisions by absenting himself from ADC’s primary ballot. It will smack of hypocrisy to seek the justice of lancing the national boil by perpetuating the injustice that only one section of the country is ordained for perpetual rulership. Surely, eminent nationalists still exist in this country who can persuade Alhaji Atiku to be kingmaker rather than king.

If Peter Obi flies the ADC flag, or any other flag for that matter, embarrassment and fright will envelop the otherwise educated folks and listless media “practitioners” trolling on the Internet and busily reinforcing utter failure. These hapless fellows are supposed to be members of a middle class obliterated a long time ago. They shamelessly deny their evisceration. But who among them can replace a burst tyre today without borrowing, thieving or settling for a second-hand tokunbo tyre? Which one of them can purchase a brand-new car battery? Which one of them can pay for a prostate or breast cancer test, let alone surgery? Apart from inducement or tribal bigotry, why would they continue singing cacophonous tunes of flattery for a Paris-based cypher who routinely responds by firing off hot trans-Mediterranean farts of empty promises to further deafen society’s flotsam and jetsam?

Those who beg for or buy bones for the taste of meat to impact their soup pots are hungry and angry. They are hangry. They cannot afford to be sick. The cost of medication hovers above their bloodied but unbowed heads. The Ministry of Health got only N35 million this year, which is relative to a Senator’s monthly earnings. And the talk is of a country of over 200 million people. The poor and pauperized are the ones deserving of urgent attention. Not those who ridiculously blame the country’s woes on Peter Obi’s “expensive” Ray-Ban sunglasses. How odd to fault a wealthy man who used honestly earned money to buy a pair of spectacles while celebrating their man for burning billions in public funds to buy himself an Airbus A330-200 aircraft, a man who tossed N5 billion of public money into acquiring a new toy of a yacht? How inane to allege that Peter Obi bribed Mehdi Hassan to fox Daniel Bwala, when his failure is symptomatic of the worthlessness of what he represents? The opposition should move with one voice. This moment’s cry is of Peter Obi and 2027.

• Chuks Iloegbunam wrote from Abuja.