Peter Obi made what psychologists would describe as a Freudian slip. He asked some Nigerians, during his fundraiser and town hall meeting in the United Kingdom, that they should not send money back home. Here was a man seeking donations for himself.
Now, this is the real definition of Pitobi’s subsidy removal. When a child is sick, and a mother wants help, do not send your dollars or pounds. Let the poor child die. If mother is aged and needs balms for her arthritis, let the hands wither and the legs dither. If your wunderkind in the family and younger brother or sister needs some funds to buy some books, let her mind starve.
When Jesus said his mission was to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother and child against parent, he meant it in the language of Paul who said “walk out your own salvation.” In the literal sense, Obi wants families to be separated into hunger, disease and death by lack of financial support. Jesus called for spiritual infusion.
It means Obi has no compassion. So, why would he be moaning that there is hunger in the land when he wants more hunger? There is a paradox here. According to the Pandora’s Papers, the former Anambra State governor was sending money to an offshore account for himself and family. Now, he says Nigerians abroad should not send home. Is he more interested in keeping money out of our economy? Is that a patriot or scavenger?
President Tinubu is fixing the pillars of the economy. He said it was parties like PDP that distorted that structure. The big house of the economy would have collapsed on everyone. To repair would cause pains, and the government is on a path to take us out of the woods. But Obi has no idea how to repair. Rather he wants to stop a heavy inflow into the economy. In the first half of 2026, $3.8 billion came in formal remittances through International Money Transfer Operators. In July alone, it was $947 million. Obi wants all these to stop.
As always, his Obidients would back him. Some say he wants to forestall dependency. In Europe, there is a properly organised welfare system. We do not have it. We have a society of affection.
It is a community of souls rather than western individualism. Obi knows that and grew in that environment. Now, he denies that he said what all of us watched and heard. His followers, including SANs, professors, topflight writers and professionals suddenly come down with cerebral seizure – or brain failure – when Obi goofs. His goof becomes wise. It was for them Leo Tolstoy mounted the campaign to “educate the educated.” Tears for them.
Nothing demonstrates this state of psychosis more than when Chidi Odinkalu argued that President Tinubu’s PCC speech was staged, and his people believed it. That is how Obidients absorb and swim in delusions. It is the Odinkalu formula. Something that happened live, and they say he staged it. It is the nature of the addiction of fanaticism. It is that kind of mindset that made Shakespeare to say, “as if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on.” It is addiction of lies feeding on itself.
