Leadership is not a populist job, it is a decision-making job. A leader must not always hearken to opinions, but should be able to take decisions and actions based on what is feasible and most beneficial to his people.
A leader who would refuse to take a beneficial decision, because his followers would not like it, is either a weak, selfish or an insincere leader.
Peter Obi has positioned himself valiantly as a rallying point for millions of Nigerians. He is loved, no doubt, but if election results are, as they should be, the correct barometer for measuring political acceptability, then, Nigerians certainly love President Tinubu and even Atiku Abubakar more than they love Peter Obi.
Politics is a game of numbers and collaborations. It is a practical game whose results are clear and instant. It leaves people who did not prepare well or who overstate the crowd noise, as solid support, reeling and writhing.
There might not be a sacred document on how politics must be played, but there is one thing that is sure; you must have a solid political structure and platform if you must win. Someone would say that the people are the structure, true, but which politician doesn’t have the people? You have your own people, your opponent has his own people. What matters is the result.
By verifiable indices of determining potential political success or electoral victory, Peter Obi does not have a pathway to winning the presidency in the coming election. Of course, election is not a do or die affair, so he can lose and move on, but that’s not the issue. We are in a peculiar nation, where one person’s political mistake could ruin the chances of an entire tribe.
Peter Obi is first and foremost an Igbo man before becoming a Nigerian, and his failures and politics are connected to the Igbo. So, his political decisions must go beyond his personal ambition. Peter Obi should therefore consider the larger Igbo interest while playing his politics. And I believe that the APC is the most reliable vehicle both for his personal political interests and the general interests of Ndigbo and even Nigerians. Below are my reasons;
1. APC, as at this moment is the most stable, if not the only stable, political Party in Nigeria..
2. Peter Obi does not have a political platform nor structure that can put him in a position to negotiate for Ndigbo and Nigerians. He needs to join the APC, to contribute more significantly to ensuring that some of his wonderful ideas for a prosperous Nigeria are actualised.
3. Peter Obi’s decision to run against the tide, would be tantamount to deceiving the Igbos to waste their votes. In our country, the failure of one candidate from an ethnic group, especially, when that candidate is believed to enjoy the massive support of his people, is deemed as the failure of that ethnic group to pose any credible political challenge.
4. Igbos, a major and indispensable leg in the WaZoBia tripod are being treated as a second fiddle, because we are, wrongly, seen as not posing any major political threat. This is because of the political miscalculations of some of our leaders, including Peter Obi..
5. It does not benefit the Southeast to remain an opposition bloc. Our best days in Nigerian politics have always been when we aligned with the Party at the centre.
6. A complete collapse of the Southeast to the APC will ensure improved dividends of democracy to the Southeast. This is because the more political positions conceded to the Southeast, the more good things trickle to the grassroots.
7. Peter Obi could better share his wonderful ideas about governance with the government, by participating in the government, instead of sitting outside to cry about bad governance and purported poverty.
8. There is no political Party in present day Nigeria that holds better promises for the Southeast than the APC.
9. Joining the APC now, will enable him to team up with other APC leaders in the Southeast like the apex leader, His Excellency Distinguished Senator Hope Uzodimma, CON, to negotiate for better things for the Southeast in 2027, going forward.
10. If he does not join the APC, we will be left with no other option but to leave him behind and deliver Southeast States to the APC in the coming election, and this will not be a good way for such a wonderful man to be retired from politics.