The shameless hypocrisy of Peter Obi, by Kayode Adebiyi

Peter Obi never misses an opportunity to turn even the most innocent of occasions into a stage for his sanctimonious grandstanding. Imagine hijacking a birthday goodwill message and twisting it into a pulpit for cheap political gaslighting. Even the melodramatic title — “We Are Finished!” reads more like the cry of a desperate attention-seeker than the sober reflection of a statesman.

Let’s get this straight, this is a former governor who had eight full years to transform Anambra’s educational and cultural landscape, but left behind no enduring state library worthy of note, now wants to posture as the guardian of Nigeria’s intellectual conscience? Spare us the hypocrisy. Where was all this fiery rhetoric when you had actual power to fix a state, not just perform as a motivational speaker on X (Twitter)?

Peter Obi pretends to be shocked that Nigerians are asked to donate to the completion of the National Library, as if philanthropy and civic contributions are alien to nation-building. Across the world, great institutions, from Harvard’s libraries to Oxford’s endowments thrive on donations from individuals and communities. But Obi, ever eager to score cheap points, twists a noble call into another wail about jets, yachts, and mansions. His tired, one-track sermon has become predictable to the point of boredom.

What is truly tragic is not the state of the National Library, but the hypocrisy of a man who boasts of prudence while keeping his personal wealth stashed offshore in secret accounts exposed by the Pandora Papers. What moral right does he have to lecture anyone about transparency, education, or national resources when he himself built no intellectual “temple” in Anambra, and instead reduced governance to market-style accounting and container economic gimmicks?

I will be blunt here, turning a woman’s birthday into a soapbox for your political bitterness is not noble. It is cheap, opportunistic, and beneath the dignity of any serious leader. Leadership is about solutions, not constant whining dressed up as intellectual lamentation. Nigeria is not “finished,” but if it depended on Obi’s brand of performative virtue-signalling, then truly, we would be.