Peter Obi’s howling hubris — by Iboro Otonganran

One of the carefully curated aspects of Peter Obi’s persona is that he is humble. His fans point to the fact that he flies economy in spite of his fabled wealth, a good deal of which he stashes away in tax havens around the world to evade paying tax to a country he is desperate to govern. They also draw attention to another fact: he trucks his luggage through airports, no airs signposted by fawning phone-and-luggage-bearing aides behind him.

By the standard of the Nigerian big man, they are right about Obi. But given Obi’s footprints in routine interactions with other human beings, his utterances concerning weightier issues than airplane travels, and the showcasing of oneself through airport departure and arrival halls, Obi’s vaunted humility is tawdry, amateurishly made up, unreal, and is fraying at the hems.

How can anyone seriously say Obi is humble when he persistently insists on special treatment for himself; where he demands coronation, rather than submit to contest, in an assembly of participants that include people like Atiku Abubakar, Rotimi Amaechi, Rabiu Kwankwaso, Nasir el-Rufai! It takes a special form of conceit to even contemplate such special attention.

The message Obi has allowed by his conduct is that he is head and shoulder above those personages named above. He sees them as beneath him, that he is an Olympian by achievements in public life, education, exposure, name it. If they say this kind of conduct projects Obi as a humble person, the Obi-dients must be hard at work to redefine humility.

Mr Humble Obi doesn’t want to be bound by conventions and norms like primary contests for a party ticket. A clear case of Obi exceptionalism. It was on display in 2022 when he left the PDP for the Labour Party because he would not want to be associated with the demeaning constitutional order of a party primary. Lesser mortals are subjected to primary contests. Obi is not in that bracket.

Obi, a former governor, who sequestered El-Rufai in a hotel room for entering Anambra State without informing him as a sitting governor, would not himself feel the obligation of the courtesy of acknowledging the leadership of another sitting governor in a state he is visiting. Obi exceptionalism. Yet they hail him everywhere as Mr Humble.

This social construct is fatally belied by unconscious actions, Freudian slips that have even become routine.
The icing on the cake of Obi’s show of hubris is his promise that if he wins, he will serve one term as president. That would be okay, and I don’t know why any critic should speak of such promise in pejorative terms?

Shouldn’t that kind of commitment place Obi within the pantheon where the incomparable Mandela belongs, and show that the man is not craving power for the sake of power? That should be the normal flow of thought except that we are dealing with Peter Obi who is not known for keeping his promises.

Remember he vowed never to leave APGA. But we know where he is today, and where he has come from to where he is. He travelled a long, long road! He may still be travelling.
Let’s give Obi a break, biko. One could change, especially with age. Along his remarkable journey through PDP, Labour Party, ADA, ADC to NDC, he must have picked up something about the virtue of staying true to one’s words. Who knows!

The concern that his default nature would show up during his presidency maybe well founded, but there is a worse, far more troubling matter about Obi’s one term promise. Complicating the single term promise is Obi’s head-spinning boast to change Nigeria and give us an el dorado in place of this troubled ecology within the same single term of four years.

This goes more pointedly to Obi’s hubris, to his self-ascribed exceptionalism than anything else he had ever said or promised. That does not hint at any character trait like humility. It is haughtiness. Haughtiness is pole opposite to humility.

Obi, the superman, is ready with a magic wand to change Nigeria in four years. A spin that would make Dr Goebbels green with envy. But before we end the story, let’s ask Mr Peter Gregory Obi whether he was able to change Anambra State in eight years, Anambra being a tiny fraction of Nigeria, wholly Christian, monolinguistic, and culturally homogeneous.

Remember Dr Goebbels big talk (read big lie) theory. The bigger the lie, the more people would be persuaded once it is repeatedly presented without pushback. Dr Goebbels was Hitler’s minister of propaganda.

The Nigeria-Anambra comparison is inescapable. Same matador but vastly unequal ecologies. Nigeria is a thousand times more complex than Anambra State. Nigeria’s cultural diversity, religious heterogeneity, regional exclusivities are challenges Obi will face down in a fleeting four-year period.

Add to these soft issues the elephantine infrastructure deficit, repair work needed in education, healthcare and the hydra-headed security monster. Within these eddies of whirlwinds, imagine Obi blowing his magical pipe like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and all our challenges disappear in four years to reveal a new Nigeria to our eternal joy. Superman Obi!

There couldn’t be a greater hubris from a man who was so befuddled in Anambra that he didn’t know what to do with state resources except to lock up all the cash in bank vaults in the face of the crying needs of his people.

Obi’s governance legacy in Anambra reminds me of the parable of the talents in the scripture, of the servant who buried his master’s money meant to be invested for returns. He buried the money out of spite and selfishness, and returned the same amount but with less value to the master at the end of the day. The scripture tells us the unthinking servant was condemned and rejected for his selfishness.

Should Obi receive a different reward for doing the same thing for which the servant in the scripture was condemned? Obi was the servant of the people of Anambra State. He buried their talents and has made a boast of it ever since.

Given his track record, Obi knows he cannot remake Nigeria in four years. One is inclined to see Obi’s promise of a one term-tenure as another cant, his latest act of mendacity, but this time on an industrial scale.
Obi thinks people in northern Nigeria will buy his bait. He is mistaken. They know his record.

–Otongaran is a communication artist