Nigerians, Happy 66th Independence Day Anniversary. May our country be a better place for all who call her home.
Time flies! In February 2023 I started the fortnightly column REFLECTIONS! The first edition was published on 1 February 2023, and it was in the heat of the 2023 general elections in Nigeria. The presidential election was just under a month away (held on 25 February 2023).
That pioneer edition had no choice than to mirror the political landscape of the country. And it was very tempting to have REFLECTIONS! endorse a Presidential Candidate. Endorsing His Excellency Mr. Peter Obi as the President Nigeria needed at that time was an easy call, hence the maiden edition of REFLECTIONS! titled IT’S PETER OBI, STUPID!, a borrowing from the former United States’ President Bill Clinton’s campaign slogan IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID!
Nigeria is back in the hustings. This time, rather than have the election in late February 2027, the electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has moved the election by a month. It will now hold in January, the first month in the new year.
So, today 1 October 2026, the 66th independent anniversary of our dear nation, is an auspicious time for REFLECTIONS! to endorse a candidate for the presidency of Nigeria at this time. As it was in 2023, this column is convinced beyond a doubt that the best candidate for the presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is His Excellency MR PETER GREGORY OBI, the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC). As it was then in 2023, the reasons I advanced for endorsing him are still germane today.
Here is an excerpt from the 2023 article: “Many of the values I hold dear are found in the man (Peter Obi). Let’s look at one: DISCIPLINE. An average Nigerian lacks discipline (insults unintended); so, when I find someone who exhibits discipline, I tend to easily connect. I am convinced beyond a doubt that Peter Obi is the most disciplined of the bunch standing for election. He will arrest the drift; cut the waste in government; his government will be the least corrupt; he will respect the rule of law; build strong institutions rather than strong men; he will fold his sleeves and serve Nigerians rather than be served”.
Though INEC declared Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives’ Congress (APC) as the winner of the 2023 presidential elections, this column, just as Mr. Obi, is of the view that the Labour Party candidate won the majority vote. In many states such as Akwa Ibom and Rivers, Mr. Obi won convincingly but was robbed of his victory.
Even though REFLECTIONS! has endorsed him as the best candidate, one is not oblivious to the odds stacked against him this time around. For instance, in Lagos State where Mr. Obi beat the incumbent President and former Governor of the state in 2023, Obi will come a distant second. The chances of his supporters being able to vote will be narrowed to trivial so the “mistake” of 2023 will not be repeated. In plain English, his supporters will be disenfranchised in Lagos through many booby traps from staging fake traditional rituals, to scaremongering, the use of federal might, and such like. A hostile environment will be created to prevent his supporters from getting to vote.
In the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) where Mr. Obi’s 2023 votes outnumbered those of President Tinubu and Vice President Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples’ Democratic Party combined, the minister of the federal capital territory will ensure that there will be no credible elections; just as will be obtained in Rivers State. He is already boasting that President Tinubu will win in the FCT.
The PDP governors who emigrated to APC will carry out many subterranean electioneering tasks to garner more votes for the ruling party. In the south east where Obi will still win convincingly, his near block vote will be whittled down in Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo, and Anambra states because of the influence of the governors and elected representatives. Even in his home state of Anambra, the governor is waging a war of attrition against Mr. Obi. Obi will still win but not by the margins we saw in 2023.
If there’s a presidential candidate who is giving the incumbent President Tinubu some sleepless nights, it is Mr. Obi. The NDC candidate has a near cult like following especially among the younger generations of voters who have not experienced what good governance looks like. The younger generations desire a change; they want something refreshingly different and they know that the APC government does not have what they are looking for.
Of course, Obi also has a strong following from the Igbo ethnic group. As I argued in my maiden edition of REFLECTIONS!, apart from his character and competence, which are shoulders high above his political rivals, the need for an Igbo presidency in an ethnically minded country is long overdue. A second excerpt: “The south east needs to take a shot at the presidency at this time of our national history. It will do Nigeria a whole lot of good. The south east believes rightly or wrongly that the civil war has not ended…and that other Nigerians always gang up against them.” South easterner becoming a president is part of that national healing.
So, the government has used all sorts of tactics to fight Mr. Obi. They even used stooges to chase him out of the Labour Party whose flag he flew in 2023. I can say without equivocation that there is no former governor in Nigeria since 1999 who is as clean as Mr. Peter Obi. By “clean”, I mean the use, abuse and mismanagement of public funds under their leadership.
More than any other politician, he has voluntarily surrendered himself to what I would call public and political MRI. All the muds thrown at him have only succeeded in washing him cleaner when you look through the lens of Nigeria’s politics since 1999.
Because Nigerians are not ready for real democracy where elections are free, fair and credible, our very best are unable to attain offices and positions that give them the legitimacy and the leverage to effect positive change that the country desperately needs.
Whether Mr. Peter Obi wins or not, he is REFLECTIONS! Presidential Candidate come January 2027.
A SHORT TAKE:
NIGERIANS’ LIVES: SHORT, CRUEL, BRUTISH!
Nigeria and Nigerians have reduced the worth of human life to the lowest level. But man, in generic sense, is the zenith of God’s creation. It beggars belief that the Nigerian Civil and Security Defence Corps would arrest several dozens of alleged illegal miners and box them up in a dungeon meant for perhaps a quarter of that number. Before one could figure out what happened, 37 able bodied men had been sent to their graves.
Before the law, a suspect is deemed innocent until proven guilty by a court of competent jurisdiction. All those arrested for the alleged illegal mining were innocent before the law. They were Nigerians; human beings with full fundamental rights of all lawful citizens.
It was within the rights of the security agency to arrest and detain the suspects, but they also had a duty to treat them with dignity deserving of every human.
I have been wondering, why pack living and breathing humans into a small cell like sardines? Why reenact the scenes of the slave trade journey to the Americas? If you had more suspects than the holding cell could handle, why did you not take some of them to the nearest police stations for detention? Why did you not call for help from other sister security agencies? Why were you so inhuman as to box up so many people in a small cell room? When they cried for help, as alleged, why did you not have mercy and attend to them? What would you have lost if some of them, say the frail, the weak, the younger, were let go?
So many WHYs for a country that has no regard for its citizens.
Esiere is a former journalist!
©️2026
