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While talking about Nigeria’s Political Future with Peter Obi’s full declaration of joining the African Democratic Congress (ADC), on one of the national Televisions, Prof. Pat Utomi declared, and I quote:
“I can tell you that Peter Obi will contest for the presidency. The day he becomes somebody’s vice president, I walk away from his corner. I can tell you that for a fact. And secondly, something significant for this election to bear in mind is that the Nigerian presidency has become a retirement home where people go to have their medical bills paid by the Nigerian states. It is not acceptable. They don’t have the fitness to run the country. The last president and the current one… are doing the same by turning Aso Rock into old people’s homes ….Uh.”
Replying to Prof. Pat Utomi, Chief Dele Momodu wrote the following.
THE NAIVETE OF THE INTELLIGENTSIA / PRIVILEGENTSIA
PROFESSOR PAT UTOMI is one of the brightest Nigerians I love and respect. We still spoke two days ago when he called me. He gave a speech at my 40th birthday lecture some 25 years ago. I truly admired him as a young man who managed Volkswagen Nigeria in those bygone days. I have followed his trajectory ever since. He is a man of immense passion whose theoretical knowledge of the rise of the Asian Tigers is quite fascinating and tempting. But that’s where my romance with him ends. I believe he has infected my very dear brother, Peter Obi, with his romanticisation of the Asian countries and obvious developmental successes. My candid view is that every nation must have its own organic strategies, while it may study and borrow ideas and ideals from elsewhere. The Nigerian topography is an abnormal configuration. For example, GANI FAWEHINMI, UTOMI, OBI, FALANA, SHEHU SANI, SOWORE and others should be able to win elections and become our own BARACK OBAMA, but not here. Primordial sentiments rule the game. This is why the above statement credited to my Egbon, PAT, and his like minds often breaks my heart. He seems not to have learnt from his own personal experience, and the example that “big grammar” doesn’t win elections. DONALD TRUMP is back today because the Republicans needed him, warts and all, to neutralise KAMALA HARRIS. Pure and simple. It is not about zoning or who’s more brilliant or elegant. The keyword is REALITY. APC had a far more FASCINATING, CEREBRAL, ELOQUENT and RESPECTABLE YEMI OSINBAJO when it chose BOLA AHMED TINUBU as its flagbearer in 2023. I’m, therefore, disappointed and flabbergasted at the total lack of political PRACTICALITY on the part (no pun intended) of PAT UTOMI, who’s been a serial victim of Nigeria’s electoral process.
Anyone insisting that OBI cannot run behind ANYONE is definitely not a Democrat who wishes to rescue Nigeria from one man dictatorship. In 2019, one visionary gentleman, ALHAJI ATIKU ABUBAKAR, placed OBI on a national platform, against the wishes of many Governors and PDP stakeholders.
OBI should be encouraged to be a humble party man…
Having painstakingly read the above, permit me to counterpunch as follows:
THE FOOLISHNESS OF FETISHIZING FAILED FORMULAS: A REPLY TO CHIEF DELE MOMODU
With due respect to you, Chief Dele Momodu, my brother, when a man falls into a pit seven times and insists the eighth hole is a throne, do we call him persistent or foolish? You have penned an ode to political “practicality” that reads like a funeral dirge for Nigeria’s future. It is the desperate hymn of the “Privilegentsia” you claim to critique, those so comfortable with the cycle of failure that any spark of genuine change scares them like daylight scares a thief.
You speak of REALITY. But which reality? The reality where the old, the tired, and the medically unfit are paraded as our only options? That is not reality; that is a curse we have been taught to accept. You point to Trump and Tinubu as examples of practicality triumphing over eloquence. But is that our aspiration? To forever choose between the bad and the worse, simply because they know the rotten game? A proverb says, “He who is being carried does not realise how far the town is.” You, carried by the politics of old connections, seem not to realise how far Nigeria has fallen behind, and how desperately our feet need to touch the ground.
Prof. Utomi’s declaration is not naivety; it is the clarity that comes from a man who has seen the inside of the pot and knows it is black. He calls a retirement home a retirement home. You ask Peter Obi to be a “humble party man” in a party whose leaders have perfected the humility of bending over backwards to collect crumbs. Where is the wisdom in asking the only man with a map to kneel and follow those happily leading us back into the forest?
You cite Atiku’s “visionary” act of 2019. But what vision ends with the same man, at 80 by 2027, refusing to pass the torch? That is not vision; it is vanity. The python that swallows a goat because it cannot find rats is not wise; it is greedy and will soon be too sluggish to hunt. The G-5 Governor’s episode during the last election period in 2023 was not an accident; it was the inevitable rebellion against a man who places self over region, and self over nation. To run from that wreckage into ADC and begin the same old song by disregarding the acceptable norm that “It is the turn of the South” is to carry the weevil into a new barn.
You are scared of “primordial sentiments,” yet you are the one whispering the tribal mathematics of who should be VP from where. The Obidient Movement has torn that old script. They are not a “South-East, Middle-Belt, South-West or South-South” concoction; they are a hurricane of hungry Nigerians from every hamlet, who have seen their future stolen and have identified the thief. They are not politicians to be traded. You cannot buy a lion with corn. Their loyalty is to the idea of a working Nigeria, embodied in the person of Mr Peter Obi. To think they will follow him into a cage as someone’s deputy is to misunderstand the very meaning of the moment.
This is the defining truth that terrifies your camp: Obi is not coming to “play the game.” He is coming to end the carnival of corruption. He is the unexpected stone that shatters the grinding stone. Of course, the birds that feast on scattered millet will panic when the farmer arrives with a new, sealed barn. The fear of your likes is not of his electability; it is of his accountability – zero tolerance for corruption.
Therefore, let this be clear as the harmattan sky: This is not 2019. The drumbeat has changed. We have moved from the politics of “it is our turn to eat” to the cry of “let us rebuild the farm.” The ADC platform is a vehicle, not a destination. And the driver must be the one the people trust to navigate the broken road, not the one who helped dig the potholes.
Chief Dele, you have danced around the masquerade for a long time. It is time to either wear the costume and join the true cleansing dance or stop blocking the arena. The advice is not for Obi to kneel, but for Atiku and his seasoned veterans to finally be wise elders, to step aside, offer their shoulders, and let a new generation climb to see the dawn. The old woman sleeps too much and misses the early morning dew.
Join hands with the Obidients. Not to lead them, but to follow the collective will of a nation gasping for air. The ADC can be the coast, but Peter Obi is the tide. And you cannot negotiate with a tide. You either sail with it, or you watch your old anchors rust in the sand. The choice is simple: Peter Obi for President, or prepare for four more years of bleeding. And after so much bloodletting, even the strongest corpse cannot be revived.
I have spoken!
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