By Femi Orebe
ACCORDING to Section 77 (2&3) of the Electoral Act 2022, Peter Obi is not a member of the Labour party. As a result, he is not qualified to contest the February 25, 2023 presidential election on behalf of the party. Section 77 (2) says every political party must have/maintain a register of its .members in soft and hard copy.
77(3) says each party SHALL MAKE THAT REGISTER AVAILABLE TO INEC NOT LATER THAN 30 DAYS BEFORE THE DATE FIXED FOR ITS PRIMARIES, CONGRESSES OR CONVENTION.
PDP screened its presidential candidates on April 29th, 2022. Peter Obi participated in the screening and was cleared to contest. He even displayed his provisional clearance on social media.
He resigned from PDP on Thursday May 26th, 2022 and joined the Labour party the following day, that is, on May 27th, 2022.
Labour party conducted its presidential primary on May 30th, 2022 and produced Obi after Professor Pat Utomi’s voluntary withdrawal.
According to section 77(3), quoted above, Labour party must have submitted its comprehensive register of members to INEC 30 days before its presidential primary.
By calculation, 30 days to May 30th, 2022 was April 30, 2022. (But) As at April 30th, 2022 when labour party submitted its party register to INEC, Peter Obi was a member of PDP meaning that his name could not have, simultaneously, been in the Labour party’s comprehensive register submitted to INEC.
The questions that then arise are:
Can a person who is not a valid member of a political party contest as its presidential candidate?
Can a political party nominate a non member as its candidate in the presidential election?”
The Presidential Election tribunal will see interesting fireworks in the days ahead – Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa (SAN) in ‘PETER OBI IS NOT THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE OF LP’.
Unknown to most Nigerians whilst the Labour Party was aggressively weaponising ethnicity and religion as its dual path to the presidency, it was nothing but a house built on sand, and certain to collapse, sooner or later.
For that, and some other reasons, it should not be a surprise to Nigerians that ‘Obidientism’, as revolution, like the Russian 1905 Leaderless Revolution before it, will finally die unsung, albeit, after its loud, boisterous and riotous beginning especially in pentecostal churches where Peter Obi became a constant, and on the social media, where its adherents, the Obidients, were spewing insults like insults were going out of usage.
Nigerians have, since after the governorship and state legislative elections, began to ask the following questions:
What became of Peter Obi who, after shining like a thousand stars at the presidential election, suddenly went limb at the governorship and state legislative elections?
What of the noisy clan of the Obi-Media Inc?
Where are the whining television anchors who did nothing besides excoriating APC, and its presidential candidate, as if that was the way to harvest votes for the 62- year old man they were doing everything to re-package like he was 40 something?
Who would have believed this is a guy who ended a 2- term governorship almost a decade ago with his name emblazoned in the PANDORA PAPERS?
Every minute you watch them, you’d see them pink- eyed, like they were about going lachrymose. There is, indeed, the one with the permanent scowl, always presenting like he was lecturing Nigerians.
So what do they do now, having been proven to be more royal than the king?
So involved and trenchant were they, you would readily know they were at a commissioned job.
What a helluva, but friuitlesss, job they ended up doing.
And we ask: what became of their exertions, daily having for guests, only those they know shared their jaundiced perspectives? Indeed, Nigerians have it on Governor Wike’s word that they once had as guest, somebody who kidnapped the wife of a Southsouth monarch. You only just have to share their views.
It was that bad.
There were also those ones on WhatsApp platforms who suddenly became emergency medical practitioners, forever diagnosing all manner of morbidities.
I personally shared two platforms with some of these individuals and, honest to God, they could make you puke. Thanks be to God, I have long made the undertaking that I was not going to lose a single friend on account of any politician, qua politician. But that did take an effort because you read them, sometimes, and you’d wonder if logical thinking has not been banned.
Indeed on one of the platforms, we are already asking if the gentlemen had since gone on exile, ahead of the big PDP chieftain who owns the patent to voluntary emigration, in case a particular individual gets elected president.
I digress.
So what became of Mr Peter Obi’s popularity after the presidential election in which he shone so brightly. That was, of course, before the final debacle of a third place, despite the deluge of opinion polls which had him as the unmatchable winner?
I am, of course, not unaware of the fact that failure is an orphan. But exactly what happened after that incredible Tsunami: from Lagos to Makurdi, Nasarawa to Jos, Benin to Asaba etc, sending many a sitting governor scampering? Need we talk about Lagos, the epicentre of gun – ho Pentecostalism where group nativity also thrumped common sense, to eventuate in what Nigerians would soon know was no win at all.
You won’t believe this, but there is already a trending WhatsApp video showing some happy – go lucky youths hoisting the IPOB FLAG at, of all places, ALAUSA, the Lagos state capital.
You can then begin to imagine from that incident, what remarkable re-engineering Lagos, if not the entire adjoining Southwest, would have seen, were our half brother to have repeated the Obi ‘miracle’ in the state.
Talking about a miracle reminds me of an interesting WhatsApp post I saw during the giddy days of a supposed Labour party victory in Lagos. It is most unlikely that the very reliable, LindaIkejiblog to which it was allegedly credited would have pulled it down, being so very popular.
It reads as follows:
LindaIkejiblog Official INEC Result for Amuwo Odofin LGA in the Presidential election. Whoever shared it commented as follows:
“Amuwo Odofin!!!
Please check the number of Regisrered Voters -322,600 and the number of Accredited Voters 57, 530.
Add Obi’s 55, 547 to Tinubu’s 13, 318! Don’t even bother with the rest! We are beginning to see how Obi “won” Lagos.
I actually bothered with the rest, did the addition of all party votes, and the following is what I got:
“Total number of registered voters – 322.600.
“Total numberof accredited voters – 57,530.
Votes:
APC – 13, 318
PDP – 2, 383
LP – 55, 547
Others – 1, 161
Total votes cast – 72, 409
Reg. voters – 57,530
Over voting – 14,879.
What does the Election Tribunal do in cases of over voting? It automatically cancels election in the affected place.
I am not the judiciary but please take away LP’s vote here from the party’s overall tally in Lagos and see whether it still wins in Lagos state.
This, obviously, cannot be a solitary incident and you then see how hollow Datti Baba- Ahmed’s boast on television last week about how LP won ‘yanfun yanfun’ everywhere in the country is.
But how hollow, and effete, Peter Obi and the Labour party really are showed up most glaringly in the subsequent elections of 18 March when, apparently, not just the youths, but also the bishops, have abandoned the over – celebrated sinking “Titanic” aka Labour party.
Even in the Southeast where Mr Obi had scored in the high 90’s in the Presidential election, 4 out of the 5 states gave him a wide berth. Labour’s sole governorship victory was in Abia. It was worst in Anambra state where Obi was governor for 8 years but all they mostly remember him for were lifeless bodies of some youths flowing on a river.
No, far be it that am saying he murdered them, but a king in a prosperous era is never forgotten, ditto the obverse.
Yet they’ve vowed not to let Nigeria rest which reminds you of the child who says her mother would not sleep.
Worse defeat is certain to befall the Labour party in future unless it finds a creative way of exorcising Mr Obi from its midst.
For one, he is too much of a tribalist to lead a Pan – Nigerian political party.
As governor of a state in the absolutely enterprising Southeast region where Nigerians from every part can flourish he, allegedly, not only banished Hausa traders, he discriminated between Catholics and Anglicans, as well as sent home to their respective Igbo states, all non – Anambrarian public servants.
What leader does that?
Less than a week to the Presidential election of 18 February, the council of state Chairmen of the party came out publicly to announce that the party couldn’t win any election, citing his clanishness.
Many may not know it now, but Nigerians will, in future, celebrate his, and his party’s rejection at the polls.
As a friend of mine put it “he weaponised religion, especially the anger over same faith ticket as well as the frustration of the Nigerian youths”.
Worse, however, is that he also brought on board, as his Vice Presidential candidate, a Datti Baba – Ahmed who is likely to be far worse than him, judging by what he demonstrated on a TV station this past week.
My friend, who also watched him, described his performance as follows:
“I was appalled at the sheer depravity of his encounter on TV- the tone, dimension, elixirs etc were scenes from a horror film. He turned the interaction into a call for anarchy, military takeover and a liquidation of the Nigerian state. All because he lost an election.
And concerning the anchor who watched on sheepishly as Baba – Ahmed ranted, he wrote: “he watched with utter helplessness, bewilderment and even confusion, as his guest turned the station to a platform for anarchists, fascists and demagogues. His inability to call him to order reflects very badly on him as a trained journalist”.
Nigerians will, in future, have every cause to thank God for sending the duo back wherever they came from.
In the meantime, they’ve gone to the Election Tribunal merely to further humor their pastor backers and their dear Obidients, as well as, but most unfortunately, the elders who, by endorsing him, called their own judgment to question.
Culled from The Nation
