Will Peter Obi disappoint us?

There is so much anger in the country. People are angry with those who currently manage our commonwealth. Even the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, has succumbed to the mass fear and is also attacking his own party. But I want us to understand one important truth. It’s not about Nigeria. It’s about the whole global system. People are tired of the way society is run. The poor blame the rich. The world is in dire need of socio-political change. But I recognize that we in sub-Saharan Africa should be the first beneficiaries of any paradigm shift because we are the poorest of the poor.

This is exactly why the upcoming elections in February are very important, not only for Nigerians, but also for Africa, and even for all the poor in the world. There’s a palpable feeling in the air. Nigeria’s teeming youth population seems to have pitched in to Labor Party candidate Peter Obi. They see him as a different candidate from his ‘old guard’ rivals and who can bring real change to the disillusioned young Nigerian. Remarkably, it is in recognition of this flood of youth support that former President Olusegun Obasanjo, when he rallied behind Obi, had primarily addressed his letter to Nigerian youth.

But before we get carried away with the exciting “hope for change” that Obi represents, let’s put the Nigerian political scenario in its true global context. From my green point of view, what we see in Nigeria is simply an extension of the desires of the people of the planet. There are so many resources, but few people take advantage of them. Then these few rich beneficiaries don’t even care about the environment as they exploit the earth and the poor. They pollute, waste and damage the ecosystem, while the poor masses suffer the ecological backlash they leave in their wake.

Two weeks ago, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, several groups staged anti-Davos rallies to protest against international corporations for exacerbating man-made damage to the environment. Environmentalists, feminists, leftist politicians and activists spoke with the same voice, calling on the world to shift its focus from profit and rethink the global capitalist economy, because without “conservation of nature … economics is not possible in the future”. There was even a call to abolish the World Economic Forum because the way it’s structured is problematic, “with the people of power and money coming here and the rest of the public out.”

What’s more, as the delegates began to arrive in Davos, “Debt for Climate” activists protested at a private airport in eastern Switzerland they said would be used by some WEF participants; and they released a statement calling for the foreign debt of poorer countries to be canceled to accelerate the global energy transition.

The central issue here is that there is a general demand for a paradigm shift towards shared prosperity, where the rich ensure that the basic comforts of life are provided to the poor in a sustainable way. At the government level, the debts of the poor countries will be canceled to sufficiently relieve them of the pressure to join others in adopting climate-friendly energy regimes. Meanwhile, the political activists among these protesters actually want power to shift from Democrats to Socialists. And herein lies the riddle. There have been several experiments in the past that have shown that shifting power is unpredictable and could create a Frankenstein.

The other concern is trust. If the rich countries canceled our debts, to what extent would our political leaders ensure that everyone gets a piece of the pie? Will they use the money to fund their extravagant lifestyles and corrupt government spending, while still impoverishing the masses? The sad reality is that the elite band together while the poor have the difficult task of finding the right person they can trust with power – a person who wouldn’t end up in bed with the elite.

For example, the president, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (ret.), seen as the leader of the oppressed masses, was called ‘Talakawa’ in Northern Nigeria. The vast majority of people who ensured his 2015 election victory were certain that he was an outsider in Nigeria’s elite gang. They trusted him to plug the drainpipe through which the corrupt rich flooded Nigerian wealth, and then put the poor back into the country’s baby bottle. They actually believed that Buhari would come and distribute wealth to them. Kind of like a Robin Hood, who took from the rich to give to the poor. They were wrong.

Yours truly was one of the people who marketed Buhari as a green politician. He was thrifty. He was environmentally friendly during his first arrival as military head of state. He didn’t seem to care about material superficialities. But when he took office in 2015, the general literally changed green clothes. He went the way of all politicians and began to abandon his friends, shape-shifting like a snake dropping its skin. Even his wife immediately raised the alarm, saying that her husband had changed and now surrounded himself with “strange faces”.

Today the Talakawas who previously believed in Buhari are now so disillusioned that they throw missiles at him. It happened in Katsina and Kano states. They no longer see him as one of them. They now see him as an aloof “rich man” who can’t feel their pain and who never cared if they lived or died. What is the sin of Buhari? He joined the elite political club. There is no concrete evidence, but people can feel his transformation. Still, his flying presidential jets (which he promised to sell and feed the poor), while he was Minister of Petroleum and did not allow the Ecological Fund to be channeled to green causes, are things to consider.

For me, it’s not just Buhari that disappointed us; our type of elite-oriented democracy also failed. Buhari was unlucky enough to be sucked into the vortex of realpolitik, and he wasn’t smart enough to survive the luxurious allure. The gang of wealthy politicians and bureaucrats who lived on our democratic Aso citadel outsmarted him. They showed him the joys of office and told him he would lose everything if he decided to stay on the green lane. He chose to obey.

The question now is whether Peter Obi’s victory will change his color. His name is closest to (R)Obi(n) Hood than any other candidate for president. Admittedly, he never claimed to be a green politician; but he is an acclaimed ‘stingy’ player. One then wonders if he could muster enough political will and personal courage to use his stinginess as a whip to correct the many laxities in our national governance process. Numerous opportunities have been missed and goodwill squandered by Buhari, not because he is corrupt, but because he lacks the intelligence, cunning and shrewdness to weave his ideology into the fabric of a highly volatile and sophisticated ecosystem like Nigeria.

Obi must think globally and ideologically because he cannot afford to disappoint the young people who are at stake for him. Democracy is failing the world, and perhaps a new political paradigm would emerge from Nigeria, as democracy and socialism once became a West versus East affair. Can Nigeria provide the world with the third ideology: a new economic and socio-political order that fuels the global hunger for justice, justice and climate action?