Only strategy not feelings will deliver the presidency to Peter Obi, by Chioma Ahaghotu

There’s a particular group of online supporters that I find interesting.

These are people who treat blind loyalty as strategy.

Any time someone points out the structural gaps in Obi’s presidency bid, they act as if identifying weaknesses is sabotage or betrayal.

It’s not. It’s the bare minimum required for anyone serious about winning power.

And before you come with your usual lines, “it’s not a must to vote for him” or “leave Obi alone,” stop. You are not serious.

Is Obi running to represent your Umunna meeting?
Will pretending the gaps don’t exist magically close them?
Are your feelings a substitute for the groundwork and blind spots that need covering?

Politics does not reward emotions. It rewards preparation.

Many aren’t even asking the most basic questions. Is he even running?
Do you have a party with nationwide machinery that can support his candidacy so he doesn’t have to carry a party while campaigning like he did with Labour?

In rural areas, where literacy is low and politics is communal, people vote by party logo, by local power dynamics, and by community hierarchy, not by whatever is trending on social media.

If your structure isn’t there, the votes simply do not exist.

Where Obi already has strength, the Southeast for example, doesn’t need any more effort. Preacher-Choir. In 2023, he got almost 86% of the vote there. More votes in Obi’s strongholds will not make him president.You can pile up millions in the Southeast and urban centers. It changes nothing.

What legally wins a presidential election in Nigeria is spread, penetrating regions outside your comfort zone and hitting the constitutional requirement of 24 states plus the FCT. That is the real game.

Ironically, these same supporters expect other tribes to back Obi and applaud them for doing so.

But let one Igbo person point out gaps in strategy, and suddenly it becomes personal.

How?

Will your feelings flip the Northwest?
Or take the swing region, North Central?
Will emotional arguments mobilize rural polling units there?
Will denial win states? No.

If you want Obi to win, then you should be SWOT-analyzing the campaign yourself, not getting worked up. Strengths. Weaknesses. Opportunities. Threats. The last three are where you focus. That is where all the blindspots are.

If all you want to hear is praise for the strengths, will the weaknesses and threats disappear because you ignored them?

Politics doesn’t work like that, and many of you know it but wanna form cause it is coming from me.

And for those chanting “the electoral system needs reform,” no shit, Sherlock. But you realized this one year before elections? Or are you waiting for social media comments to overhaul decades of institutional decay?

The system will not reform itself because your favorite posted something inspirational.

Now let’s talk numbers and geography. These are the 12 states Obi won in 2023:
Lagos, FCT, Anambra, Enugu, Imo, Abia, Ebonyi, Edo, Delta, Cross River, Nasarawa, Plateau.

These are urban, youth-heavy, higher literacy, Christian-majority, digitally connected blocs.

These are places predisposed to his messaging. That is momentum, not national dominance.
It does not deliver 24 states.
It does not penetrate the “core” North states.
It does not move the rural blocs that actually decide elections.

If you tell yourself the truth, core northern voters are not aligned. Same way that the muslim-muslim ticket controversy didn’t sway them.

The Northwest and Northeast, the largest voting populations, remain loyal to APC and PDP through emirate structures, religious networks, and longstanding alliances.

Obi did not crack them in 2023. He is not cracking them now with mere intent or saying the right things. Pretending otherwise is political delusion. You ad the supporter cannot hope your way through it. You should be focused on seeing ways to bridge that gap and do it quickly.

You must first understand that each region has very specific pain points, touch points, and leverage, and your messaging and approach must lean into them to get through.

Now let’s add the real question many still avoid: the elephant in the room.

How do you plan to outmaneuver an incumbent with a ruthless national machinery who is not PLANNING on losing? Do you not see the mass defections?

If you say he “fixed” the elections, and you have neither will nor means to “outdo the doer”, then what? Waste the hope and go to sleep?

If Tinubu could win as a non-incumbent in 2023, how exactly do you plan to defeat him as an incumbent in 2027?
What is the counter? What is the strategy? What is the roadmap? Don’t tell me, apply it.

Even without campaign season officially started, we should be seeing and hearing even soft whispers. But nothing.

And I know a few people will rush here with, “Work is being done behind the scenes.”
Please. Be for real.

If the work in the shadows cannot be felt in the daylight, cannot be traced in voter maps, new coalition alliances, expanded structures, then what exactly are we talking about?

Politics is a game. As the candidate has his interests, so do those who have to vote.

It is not moral outrage.
It is not social media intelligence.
It is structure. It is spread. It is machinery.
It is negotiation, coalition-building, and presence where votes actually live.

2023 is long gone. You have to get over it so you can focus. You cannot use a 2023 mindset to prep for 2027 or even 2031. The shock element is gone. Now the work will be much harder. And for people who say Obi is the best option, act like it, because your outrage on my strategy posts will not complete the vote.

You need the independents, the swing votes states and blocs, you need the disgruntled and disillusioned from PDP, they will not automatically swing to Obi, you need the northern elites and all that follow their command, you need the uninformed and easy to sway who can align on a rally point. You need those who have given up but have one more fight in them. You need the ones you think you do not need. You are already behind. So you better get on the bridge and pull other people in instead of telling them to vote or not.

And I can tell you this, because Obi is not running to represent only Obedients! And non Obedients will need to vote for him for that “spread” to spread.

Obi shocked the country in 2023, absolutely. Nobody expected a third force to move numbers like that. But shocking the country is not the same as building the machinery required to win it. And this machinery many of you say doesn’t matter, will matter in those areas Obi doesn’t have strongholds.

Yes, there was a shift. Yes, urban voters were an*gry. Yes, Lagos punished the system and wanted to teach Tinubu that he does not own them. But that does not equal a national realignment. At least not yet.

Obi won where he won for very specific reasons: ethnic consolidation in the Southeast, resentment against Tinubu in Lagos, Christian backlash in parts of the Middle Belt because of the Muslim-Muslim ticket, multi-ethnicity in Edo, and cosmopolitan demographics in Abuja (Knowing the “Why” is super important, it helps you design insight based solutions).

If an Obi revolution was truly underway, it would have shown in state houses, state assemblies, and local governments. Instead, Labour collapsed after the elections. One governorship in Abia. 8 senate seats. 34 House of Representatives seats. Almost no state assemblies. Zero ward-level machinery. And Obi could not even translate his popularity into winning LGAs in Anambra’s last elections. That tells you everything. Many of those who won riding on Obi’s popularity have mostly defected or “partyless” in 2027.

And there is another fantasy that I read earlier in a comment: the new generation will not take 5k or be swayed by stomach infrastructure. While this makes one feel good it is not grounded in real Nigeria.

Most youth, especially outside the cities, are unemployed or underemployed.

They are not rejecting money out of principle. They are in survival mode.

Someone who has not had stable income for months will take 5k because it handles immediate needs: food, transport, fuel, medicine, or helping their family. You cannot shame survival.

The people who decide elections are not the X crowd. They are the farmers, market women, artisans, rural youth, and transport workers. Those people you see when you go to your village, whose daily survival is under constant thr*eat. Until they shift, Nigeria does not shift.

Something may break eventually. But it will not be because 2023 “came close.”

It will be because a future disruptor builds what Labour never built:
Real machinery.
Real coalitions.
Ward networks.
Grassroots presence.
Labour-union alignment.
And penetration of the North, materially, not rhetorically.

Loyalty without strategy is sentiment.
Sentiment without structure is fantasy.

If Obi is to win, real supporters must drop the emotions where it matters, confront the gaps, and get serious.

Because power does not respond to feelings.
It responds to work and motion.

By Chioma Amaryllis Ahaghotu