The leaked audio of Peter Obi proclaiming to a leading Nigerian pastor that the election was a “religious war” is politics at its basest, most incendiary level. Try as anyone might, one cannot excuse Obi’s proclamation of war against Nigeria’s Muslim population.
Add this to earlier revelations where, talking from a church’s pulpit, Obi exhorts the audience in his best Trumpian imitation, ”to take the country back.” Pardon me, Mr. Obi, many of us are unfamiliar with your brand of insinuation. We ask you to speak plainly. Tell us who took the country, when did they take and to where? You dare not openly say the hateful things that lurk behind your choice of words. It has always been your strategy that enough people will draw the desired inference from your coded phrases without you having to resort to the language of overt bigotry.
The leaked tape has punctured Obi’s slick covertness. His bigotry is running nakedly and rudely about, like an unruly child who escaped from the clutches of a manipulative parent. His own words have revealed him to be the hypocrite and bigot the majority of the Nigerian electorate knew him to be. That is why most people did not vote for him. That is why his is not their president elect. He waged a clandestine religious war against Muslims and tolerate, thoughtful Christians. Electoral loss was the inevitable outcome of his sneak attack on decency.
The sad aspect of this election is not that Obi lost but that such a man of hate-filled character somehow gained over 6 million votes.
Hopefully, many who voted for him were genuinely deceived by his talk of decency and newness. Hopefully, they were not bigoted draftees in his outrageous religious war for there was nothing new or fine in what he professed to the cleric. His way is an unregenerate and bleak one.
This small exposure of Obi’s truest character and inner thoughts should cause most of his followers to rethink their support. Can someone whose mind is so heavily skewed against one religion hope to properly lead such a diverse nation as Nigeria? The answer is patently obvious. Obi has disqualified himself. He would have set a religious torch to this nation, burning instead of building, further dividing it instead of uniting its people. Hatred instead of harmony would be his operative policy and our operative condition.
More than any other person, Labor Party VP Datti Baba Ahmed should rethink his position. He passed himself to the people as a man of principle and values. He denied being a politician, declaring himself a builder of a new Nigeria that would be devoid of the ugly things of old. He cited his role as evidence that Obi had no religious agenda a non-Christian should fear. In fact, come one, come all; both gentle man and feral animal could sleep comfortably in the bosom of saintly Peter of Obi.
By Obi’s own words, this purported haven turned out to be trickster’s ruse. Behind the happy veneer, churns a cauldron of prejudice and bigotry. The stridency of Obi’s statement even momentarily startled the listening pastor for the man of the cloth briefly paused before replying to the rancid commentary. Had the pastor said the thing that came from the mouth of Peter, the world would be scarcely surprised. That the innocent-looking Obi was at secret war with roughly half the nation while at the same time soliciting their votes was an act of the highest theatrics teamed with the lowest morals.
During this episode, the Labor Party’s outspoken VP candidate has been strangely silent. What can he possibly tell his fellow Muslims whom he asked to believe in his belief in Obi? If possessed of the strength of character he assigns to himself, Datti would publicly say Obi deceived him; that a man of such reckless hatred of another faith should not be given charge of this complex nation. Neither Christian nor Muslim extremist ideas should be allowed in the corridors of power of our democratic land. However, Datti will not dare take such a courageous step. He is too enamored with the allure of power. He would rather come to power under someone who wants to suppress his coreligionists than to live as a productive citizen in a harmonious, tolerant society.
Thus, Datti will not speak as he should on this issue. He hopes that all will blow fast away before he is forced to comment. If compelled to speak, he will offer the lamest of excuses for the most egregious of remarks. On this pending moral question, Datti has rendered himself MIA – Missing In Action. Ultimately, he has allowed personal ambition to make him a prisoner, if not a casualty, in the religious war his boss declared on the Nigerian political system.