Obidient noise: High echoes, low votes, By Kunle Awosiyan

Only those who have little knowledge of Nigeria politics will easily be moved by the wave of excitement that the “Obidients” has created in the last few months.

Fans of the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi are so sure that the 2023 election is for them to win. The confidence must have come from the loud noise on social media platforms.

The echoes of these irregular vibrations are so deafening that fans of other candidates cannot even hear words anymore.

And when they are with you physically in their low number, they raise their voice to reverbrate the echo. There are places I will never discuss politics today because of the fanatical belief in Obi. They will not just listen to one’s analysis no matter how good it may sound.

However, there are some places where Obi is not popular at all. The echo of Obi’s noise is very high in the low votes south and diminishes towards the high votes north.

He is loud in Alaba International Market, he is loud in Ladipo Auto Spare Parts Market, Matori, Oshodi Lagos. Obi is loud in Igbo high populated Festac area of Lagos. He is loud wherever there are Igbos no matter their size. The Obidients must raise their voice and speak louder, it is an idea to sell their candidate. They speak up, it is good.

The latest viral video is about a Nigerian woman at a Canada Airport, shouting Obi, Obi, Obi. She said that was what she wanted and that the noise about Obi must go viral. Yes her video went viral, it also became heavy in the south but began to fade towards the north, according to report.

No doubt Obi has captured his own in the southeast, south-south and a bit of southwest, most especially Lagos where there is large concentration of Igbo doing business, however his sound fades towards the north, a region that will determine who wins the next election.

The most silent people on social media platforms are the northerners, yet they have the largest votes. The loudest are the Igbos but they do not have enough votes to produce the next president. The Yorubas stand in between and they are the most liberal who have shown greatest ethnic and religious tolerance. The Yoruba conviction is not determined by either religion nor ethnicity but competence when it is about votes.

Of course there are a few members of other ethnic groups who will choose based on competence, their numbers are too small compared to Yorubas who have been criticising their own, the APC presidential candidate, Asiwaju Tinubu. I mean Yorubas who don’t want Tinubu are more than the Igbos who don’t want Obi. Obi looks more like Igbo project.

According to findings, the Igbos in the north have not been able to sell Obi the way he is being sold in the south, meaning that the obidients have a lot of work to do when the campaign begins proper this month.

I do not know where the euphoria is coming from and I think the Obidients need to learn politics that noise does not win election but votes. The only state in the southwest where Obi can beat PDP not to talk of APC is Lagos because of the Igbo population.

In other words, Obi will only help APC against PDP in Lagos because the card carrying members of APC in Lagos alone will dwarf the new obidients population who only have their strength in some part of the state.

Will Obi have good votes in Borno, it is capital NO. Will Obi have good votes in Kwara, it is capital NO, will Obi have good votes in Kano, it is a NO.

Will Obi have good votes in the southeast and south-south, it is a Yes but then he will only be sharing PDP votes in those areas because the states are not originally for APC but PDP. In these south-south and southeast, only Rivers State delivers greatest number of votes and Obi may not get what he wants there because of Nyesom Wike’s indecisive factor. Borno votes alone may nullify all the southeast votes.

For APC, the party is concentrating on its stronghold to deliver while also wooing the biggest voters of the Rivers to its side. So when Obidients make noise and act as if they have won, I laugh and wonder if they know anything about Nigeria politics.

The obidients action always send me back to the past when the popularity of Chief Obafemi Awolowo was so spread that I thought no one could stop him from becoming Nigeria’s president.

Those of us children at the time were so sure of Awolowo’s victory in 1979 because of his popularity down south but he was not popular in the north as we thought. Awo was only famous among the political elite in the north while the “Talakawas” voted massively for Alhaji Shehu Shagari.

It was not until 1982 that Awolowo intensified his campaign effort to the north that he was able to pull some votes together, yet the arithmetic of two third refused him the chance in 1983.

How I wish I could replay the politics of the second Republic for the present obidients so that they can learn that noise doesn’t win polls but votes and when it is about votes, the north has got it.

-Awosiyan, a journalist writes from Lagos