Bomba Dauda
Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi, is pursuing his ambition on the party’s platform as a launch pad and he is doing it in an epic proportion. As it is now, millions of Nigerians are thronging into the party after Obi becomes the presidential ticket bearer. His presence, no doubt, in the party has created a magnetic reflux. Obi has pulled both contagion and domino effects. But, can the resilience of Nigerian youths whose crave for “shi-shi” in the circumstance that Obi is promising “no shi-shi” be enduring?
LP has cosigned to the political space unforeseen political pressure and anyone handling Obi-LP threat with kid gloves is doing it at his detriment, the party seems to have amply capability of wreaking havoc to, especially PDP because it is holding sway in geopolitics that are traditionally PDP’s strongholds.
Sincerely, if anyone claims LP is playing the decoy for APC or are hand in gloves he is not too far from the fact. From the axiom that the hoards of LP hardcore followers leaned their political philosophy to Nigeria’s political actualities, if anyone takes its threat too serious or losing sleep over the temporary threat he is merely exhibiting tendency akin to a greenhorn politician.
This is the reason, LP embarked on a political tourism with a puppet idea. Four reasons they’re being viewed as that: priding themselves as a political party without a structure and naively bragging about it, calling themselves vote wasters which is an acceptance to playing the role of spoiler and not ambitiously in the race, being stingy and comically behaving likewise and having a superficial popularity that its potency is yet to be tested and dramatically swaggering with pomp and pageantry. The resilience of pro-Obi will be tested in a later date in September when the ban on campaign is lifted.
To start with, LP is an association of aggrieved and disgruntled PDP members erroneously using pain reliever as a healing drug. In addition, LP props its support base from the Christians enclave following the bitter experience of the faith under the thumb of President Muhammadu Buhari or rather his fiefdom. Again, APC presidential candidate, Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu’s Muslim-Muslim ticket combined to give LP the relevance it is enjoying currently.
Buhari is alleged of unapologetically running an Islamic and Fulani supremacist agenda while damning the lofty ideals of Federal Character. Christians never had it on a platter under Buhari and Tinubu’s presidency is pre-empted, if elected, to be worse than what is obtainable today. If Buhari was a liberal Muslim and a true nationalist there probably wouldn’t have being Obi-LP temporary offbeat and cult followership.
So, LP is conceived as a surrogate, a political option, not a best bet. LP is exhibiting all the trappings of an alternative and not a solution. It will definitely run to its cul-de-sac if Obi fails to clinch power in 2023, evidently so with its numerous political concepts that are bereft of political realities. What takes the real element of politics off LP content is its elementary analysis of the nation’s political landscape, very imaginative, too assuming and full of theatrics.
