The Labour Party, in the recently concluded elections, has ridden on the anger of youths – and of course a lot of adults – around the country, to post a very impressive first-time performance for Mr Peter Obi. Admixed with that – perhaps as a foundation – is also the quest by Igbos to have a shot at the presidency in Nigeria, after decades of what many describe as deliberate exclusion or conspiracy.
The performance of the Labour Party, which has eaten away considerably at the opposition power of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) – is one helluva complex phenomenon to unpack, but try I will. The ethnic fervour is surely a factor, and a valid one at that. Add to these two, Mr Obi’s appeal to Christians around the country. This last part was not taken on board in the rather religiously-liberal South West where people seem not to be cowed by their many fire-spitting pastors. But this may have been a major factor in states like Taraba, Nasarawa, and Plateau.
So, Peter ran with three emotional forces – youth anger, ethnic assertion and the very deep-rooted and powerful Christian persecution mentality. As a Christian myself (even though of the very liberal hue), I grew up in the middle of Pentecostalism and I am very aware of the stories they tell about the fierce and often deadly ‘God-ordained’ competition with Islam.
This is a powerful combination. At the end, Mr Obi had a mishmash of followers, many of whom refused to see whether the basis on which they had formed a quick alliance will augur well for the country, or even if such a platform was in their enlightened best interest. There were Muslim youths who were ‘tired of the status quo’, who were in that alliance with fierce Pentecostal and even Catholic preachers, whose pursuit was to the detriment of Islam – and vice versa. And there were no umpires within that setup who could call a truce, in case they found power. There were millions of non-Igbo people in that alliance who had signed up to drink from the same chalice as active members of separatist groups who were just moonlighting as nationalists for a purpose.
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The senate candidate who was killed in Enugu, in a very gory massacre, Barrister Oyibo Chukwu, in his lifetime was also a fierce Igbo nationalist who really didn’t believe in the entity called Nigeria. I have viewed severally a video in which, two years ago, he addressed a town hall meeting somewhere in the east of Nigeria, explaining to young men how the Igbos could liberate themselves from Nigeria.
One of the key strategies he mentioned was that they should get an Igbo person to be president. Brimming with what could be termed as a superiority complex, he averred that an Igbo president will dismantle Nigeria very quickly ‘without firing a shot’. He also urged Igbo youths to become suicidal in the hue of the Japanese Kamikazes who dove their small planes into huge American warships during the second world war. I was more than alarmed. See the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPQNaOKLEJI.Allegedly, he ended up being murdered and roasted by the same elements he fought for. Most unfortunately. This was why I refused to join the Obidient camp no matter how many insults, accusations, name-callings and impugnments I received. I just don’t believe in queuing up behind a bunch of negative emotions.
I am a live-and-let-live guy. I don’t believe that my Yoruba ethnic stock is better than others. Or maybe we are better at some things and worse at others – like everyone else. I don’t believe in the war between Christians and Muslims. I saw how that played out for my father as a teenager. The Pentecostal pastors took everything he had as he struggled through financial problems, even when we his children had no clothes on our backs.
We prayed and prayed and prayed. But things never improved for him until we started taking care of him. He’s gone now but I remember him expressing some bitter skepticism about the Nigerian brand of Christianity and their focus on money close to the tail-end of his time on earth. I couldn’t believe my ears that day. My Dad, the prayer warrior, expressing anger at the way the church had turned out in Nigeria today.
Perhaps that was why I was glad to marry into Catholicism. I saw they were less meddlesome and didn’t enslave members by demanding money all the time. But in this political season, the Catholic Church in Nigeria went into overdrive. In the parish where I registered but rarely attend, someone called me to ask where I was one Sunday as they had called my name out to charge me and others to support Obi – by force by fire. I was afraid and have avoided that parish since then.
We have seen other priests and bishops threaten their members about the elections, invoking curses on those who refused to vote for Peter Obi. Now, I don’t play that. I believe rather in the God of second and third and fourth chances. I believe in that God that sometimes uses those whom the world has condemned, for great things; the kind of God who can use a Bola Tinubu, condemned and hated by many, dismissed for several reasons, deeply disdained, and all that, for greatness in the society called Nigeria.