By Joni Akpederi
OBIDIENT: / obi.di.ent /adj.,noun.
Adj. Believing in or connected with the candidacy and philosophy and good intentions of Peter Obi, a soft-spoken, charismatic Presidential aspirant in Nigeria’s approaching 2023 elections.
Noun. A person who believes in or is a motivated believer in , and supporter of Peter Obi who seeks the office of President of Federal Republic of Nigeria after being convinced of the hopelessness of any redemption from the failing Nigerian state under other candidates parading themselves and jostling for the position.
Note that there is no mention of political parties in this definition since Peter Obi, now of the Labour Party, was an aspirant the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) less than a month ago. Opportunistic party-hopping in search of platforms to launch bids for grabbing lucrative political office has become the whole essence of the political game.
Note also that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is virtually indistinguishable from the PDP as members of both parties freely hop in and out of either of them as if engaged in mutually agreed exchange programme in search of lucrative public office or political appointments.
So who cares about the bland, nondescript political parties in Nigeria anymore when they are nothing more than ineffectual Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government whose staff are simply employees looking out for their own benefits and not for the good of the general populace whose taxes pay their wages?
None of the country’s leading parties can show proof of their organization’s source of funding other than the coffers of government, constantly ravaged and looted by party chiefs in public office. None has attempted to redeem itself by showing the world how it funds the lavish campaign “orgies” it engages in every four years. The corruption of the institution of the political party which results in this reliance on the state and other non-membership sources of funding is known in political science as “cartel party thesis”. Political scientist Peter Mair observes that in terms of their representative role, parties appear to be less relevant and to be losing some of their key functions He further states that in public office, “ they appear to be more privileged than ever”. This is evidently true, especially of leaders in Nigeria and other poorly-run developing societies.
Especially since the advent of Muhammadu Buhari in 2015, political party leaders have so dominated their parties that their names and images have virtually replaced the identities of their parties to their peril.
APC? What’s that?
Sai Buhari.
Oh Yes. That’s really what the teeming masses of “worshippers” of the ruling party leader know and identify with. The party’s official name fabricated from an alliance of disparate political groups means nothing to them and they couldn’t care less if it was ACP or CAP. After all, the APC is essentially a pastiche of strange political bedfellows (weak political parties, disgruntled losers, and political jobbers outplayed in previous elections) brought together for the sole purpose of cornering power and nothing else.
The PDP, former ruling party and now main opposition party has similar unedifying origin and configuration. In 2019 when their enchanted supporters styled themselves as “Atikulated”, in honour of Abubakar Atiku, its Presidential candidate. Their allegiance to the party still rests on their love and support for Atiku who is still their leader and main sponsor and moneybag.
Today, another figure and visage in the Presidential rough and tumble race, Bola Tinubu, variously eulogized as ‘Jagaban’ and ‘Asiwaju’ and now ‘BAT’, floats around, eclipsing his party’s brand and insignia.
Absolutely bereft of any purpose other than the capture of state power for party leaders’ inordinate ambition and greed, Nigeria’s political parties have, over the years turned their leaders into dubious “living ideologies” with so much empty rhetoric that voters can only make blind choices based on the super-hyped profiles and puffed-up images of their flag bearers and main fountains of campaign and vote-buying cash.
All that is beginning to have a serious backlash, which is undermining the system and making nonsense of the country’s polity and continued existence as a functioning state. Nothing demonstrates the populace’s disenchantment with politicians and cynicism towards political parties as the rise of Peter Obi’s personal fame and stature as one largely untainted by the crass greed and inordinate ambition of the ‘ancien regime’ of political godfathers and jobbers. The spontaneous emergence and growing popularity of the “Obidient” crowd of supporters has caught the old guard politicians by surprise. Obi himself has kept faith with his supporters by shunning the old established parties and opting to seek office in a relatively unknown party while openly lambasting the odious practice of vote-buying by the established parties.
The entire nation eagerly looks forward to the winding down of the current administration, absolutely frustrated and disappointed in the national embarrassment, it has turned out to be. All indices of governance have gone southwards; just as all hopes of redemption have receded.
The Buhari-led APC administration has been unable to keep the smallest of its vows, namely, to curb rampant corruption and restore security of lives and property. To everyone’s horror, the nation has spiraled into unprecedented anarchy, and complete loss of political will to deliver the minutest semblance of good governance. Yet it hopes to get the Nigerian electorate to return the crisis-ridden, underperforming party, APC, to power. Funnily enough , the opposition PDP, which today is regarded as a poor twin of the APC, expects the populace to throw its sick sibling out for evident hypocrisy and non-performance on its own favour. Such is the ludicrousness of Nigeria’s political scene.
And now we have a growing army of “Obidient” activists who do not care for any party but are ready to shoo in the charismatic Peter Obi with his sweet message of genuine change from the mercantilist politics of greed, waste and nepotism. Obi’s emergenceis the closest thing we have to independent candidacy, a provision many political pundits have been advocating since the country returned to civilian democratic rule in 1999. Now the hitherto complacent power-brokers of the entrenched parties are confused and in full panic mode.
Suddenly, it seems political parties do not matter anymore.