Obi’s new fixation

August 11, 2025 by Hardball

It started as a three-pronged farce, but you can trust Peter Obi, Labour Party (LP) candidate in the 2023 presidential election, to weigh in with comical nobility!

It was all intra-African Democratic Congress (ADC) manoeuvering to game that platform’s presidential ticket, among the many wannabes scrambling for that lolly.

Crafty Atiku Abubakar, now the northern irredentist (as he postured in 2023, thus dealing the PDP a near-mortal blow), then a born-again(st?) pan-Nigerian, as he now postures in the run-up to 2027, started it all with that farcical pledge: I will only do one term and quit!

How would that help anyone, though?  After his one term, who takes over?  The North which should duly have, had it waited for the South to finish own eight years, watching its back as it does?  Or the South that would now step into, Heraclitus-speak, an entirely new river, in Nigeria’s perennial challenge to find true nationhood?

It was crafty Atiku’s attempt to explain the crass illogicality of own rabid ambition.

Then, Rotimi Amaechi, a decent governor at Rivers and passionate Transport minister under PMB, but whose politics is out-and-out boyish and infantile.  “I’ll do one term too,” he pledged. “If I renege, stone me!”  As boyishly infantile as Rotimi Amaechi!

But of course, anywhere there’s political inanity — for our man is condemned to talking (sense or trash) — there you’d find Obi!  In the latest political burlesque in town, he certainly must show up!

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Waxing poetic over the farce, Obi compared himself to the American duo of Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy and South Africa’s eternal pearl, Nelson Mandela, the one and only Madiba.  Well, talk is cheap! 

It’s clear heresy, driven by a chronic personality flaw, for gas-emoting Obi, with his China stats and constant lies, to ever compare himself to this trio.  It’s even worse for a guy whose tenure as Anambra governor was at best mediocre, to swear, with some papal solemnity, that he would solve all of Nigeria’s problems in four years, without realizing his clear self-mockery. His usual empty drivels are the clear opposite to rigour!

Well, such drivels drove him to his over-performance in 2023.  Why not an encore in 2027?  Best of luck to him!  He’s often reminiscent of one of James Hadley Chase’s popular titles: believe this — believe Peter — you’d believe anything!

That’s the comic Peter Obi projecting his new-found fixation with spending four years and vanishing.  Again, good luck to him — and hey, it’s a democracy!  The right to self-scam, aside scamming the gullible, is free and democratic! 

Even then, nothing appears more amusing than comic Obi doubling down on his new fixation with a single term, like some agama lizard, nodding furiously to what no one knows. 

It’s comic relief, en route to 2027!  Enjoy it!