By Steve Osuji
Let’s illustrate it in a simple term: the PETER PARADIGM is the ability to execute a coup without a drop of blood.
It is the fine art of quiet revolution.
It’s akin to Prometheus, the good Greek god being unbound upon Nigeria.
As we say on our streets, let’s go there!
The above captures the essence of PETER GREGORY OBI, the two-time governor of Anambra State and currently, the flagbearer of the Labour Party of Nigeria in the 2023 presidential election.
We can also call him THE SMILING DISRUPTER or the MODERN PROMETHEUS; the master orator with and effeminate voice.
How could you execute a major coup d’etat with nary a drop of blood? What demons drive a man who could stop a baying mob in its track and talk it out of its depravity and damnation? That’s Peter Obi.
The ability to disrupt and rebuild things so quietly, has been the life of Peter Obi since he stepped into the murky arena of Nigeria’s politics about two decades ago.
What did he achieve as governor of Anambra State, some still ask, though not without a tinge of mischief? But Obi’s single most important impact on Anambra is his ability to re-order the state and imbue her with peace. The state was short of being a jungle, a haven of disorder, filth and unruliness. It was a place hijacked by marmon, where the filthy-rich were crass and indeed, filthy, uncultured and unconscionable.
Obi cleaned up Anambra, starting with Onitsha, the disheveled and sprawling commercial embankment by the shore of the great River Niger. No descriptions would suffice here than to know Onitsha before and after Peter. He didn’t only dislodge the physical malfeasance he also cleared the human debris, literally and metaphorically. He exorcised Anambra.
Would you know the difference between a human dreg terrorising commuters at the bridgehead entry point and the uncultured nouveau riche down the stretch at Aroma Junction who’s convoy is superior to the governor’s in length and quality of auto-machines on wheels?
How do you manage the two divergent ugliness to achieve desirable outcomes?
How do you take an Anambra famed for being a trader-nation where the male child had jettisoned school to become a market rat, and turn it into the best educationally advanced spot in Nigeria in eight years?
How do you get the entire UN and World Bank systems eating from your palm? How do you pass this singular, all important message that development fund is available all over the world, begging to be deployed by leaders who are judicious and keen to lift their land and people?
How do you reconstruct ingrained psychopathic constructs and existential maladies that have tormented generations of a people? From the man who is born to find food only by harming his neighbour and the fellow who has enjoyed generations of official brigandage. The one dog is born to believe he’s meant to scrounge off the streets and the other dog, a top dog, is born to cannibalize all other dogs.
How do you interrogate and deconstruct a long-ingrained dog-eat-dog state of nature?
How did Obi circumscribe the top-dogs of Anambra who were entitled to first charge of the federation allocations of the state and who also hijacked the internal revenues portals? The jackals who would rather snatch the funds for workers’ wages, pensions and gratuities? How did he manage to keep them at bay without bloodletting?
As you read, some dimwit governors who are angling to be president have not and cannot pay salaries and other basic emoluments for months. Yet they would mortgage their states to buy the presidency of Nigeria and pay in dollars!
Peter made a paradigmical statement by showing to all Nigerians that a state could be built without piling up debts. We thought it was impossible to run a state without reckless borrowings. Then again, it would be okay not to save if you didn’t borrow. No, not for Peter. Though he didn’t borrow, he had better HDIs to show than his peers. He put his peers to shame by saving billions of Nigeria for posterity.
In a milieu where leaders are ever weeping about insufficiency of revenues, Peter accumulated surpluses for Anambra. He could have pocketed the savings as most of his colleagues did and still do… no, he left the money in the till for the good of his people!
He ran Anambra like an efficient conglomerate and kept her books green all the way. This is paradigm shift par excellence. Indeed, he was a governor par excellence.
Today, Peter seeks to run the race of his life. He wants to run Nigeria. Like Prometheus, he seeks to bring light to a dark isle. He is poised like a god who has stolen fire from other malevolent gods to light up his country Nigeria.
Like Prometheus, the goodly Greek god who was afficted for his brave adventure, can Peter pull this through? Can he rescue a people deeply marinated in corruption for decades?
For a country already suffering from the Barabas malady; a people who would readily reject Jesus Christ in favour of an armed robber, can the Peter Paradigm work in an expanded context? Can Peter clean the Nigerian miasma? Would the barbarians at the gate let him in?
The flight has hit turbulence already. The PDP gods had ganged up against him to inflict a mortal humiliation upon him. But the gods removed him from their midst and schemes. In the conclave of rogues, saints are not allowed!
Now he has anchored in the Labour Party, they will throw everything at him. They will blackmail him, they will seek to tar him.
The contest already is not between PDP and APC, it a contest between Peter Obi and the rest, a mortal battle between light and darkness. Prometheus has walked into Nigeria bearing light…!
While other questers (and jesters) for power tell us it’s their life’s ambition to be president or wear that tag, Obi tells us he’s not desperate to be president, but desperate for a better Nigeria. In two weeks, he did a whistle stop tour of the length and breath of Nigeria. His message is simple and clear – let us quit consuming and start producing. Let us shun corruption starting from me and my family. Let us stop ostentation and wastefulness in public offices. Let us eschew official roguery in high places. Let us stop stealing from the treasury to run elections. Let us stop spending dollars in Nigeria, it kills our economy. Let us look beyond oil. Let us develop Nigeria the way other countries have been developed. Let us…, let us…. let us..! He knows it’s team work.
Peter knows Nigeria has huge capacity for greatness but lacks leadership to spark her fire. Nigeria needs a paradgm shift, Nigeria needs a Prometheus who can steal the thunder to spark her energies!
2023 is Nigeria’s epiphany, will her Prometheus be unbound?
▪︎ Osuji is a newspaper columnist and public affairs analyst.