Peter Obi: Politics of hysteria and the poverty of answers
There are moments when a nation’s political temperature reveals more than any manifesto ever could. A stray exchange, a burst of digital outrage—and suddenly, the mask slips. The recent intervention
- By Daniel A. Noah Osa-Ogbegie
There are moments when a nation’s political temperature reveals more than any manifesto ever could. A stray exchange, a burst of digital outrage—and suddenly, the mask slips. The recent intervention by Dele Momodu, decrying the vile tone directed at Atiku Abubakar by some supporters of Peter Obi, is one of those moments.
This is not about personalities. It is about temperament.
A movement that once claimed the moral high ground now struggles to tolerate the most basic democratic reality – that others may choose differently. Disagreement is treated as betrayal. Dissent is met with hostility. Once you step outside their line, you are no longer merely wrong—you are to be ridiculed, hounded, erased.
That is not politics. That is fanaticism.
No democracy survives that instinct. The constitution guarantees freedom of thought, expression, and association. These are not decorative provisions; they are the pillars of civilised political engagement. Once a group begins to act as though those rights apply only to those who agree with it, it has already placed itself in opposition to the very democracy it claims to defend.
This is precisely why the concern cannot be dismissed as the excesses of overzealous supporters. Movements reflect their centre. Tone flows from leadership. Where clarity is weak, emotion grows loud. Where substance is thin, outrage fills the gap.
Which brings us, inevitably, back to Peter Obi.
Weeks ago, I raised a simple issue. It remains unanswered. If anything, recent events have sharpened it.
He was asked a direct question on national television: “Can you rate your chances in the 2027 Presidential election?”
What followed was not an answer. It was a familiar drift—productivity, consumption, governance, the people, investment—words, many words, carefully arranged to avoid the one thing required: clarity. No rating. No strategic assessment. No political positioning.
Call it what it is: evasion.
This is not an isolated lapse. It is a pattern—a consistent substitution of precision with generality, of answers with abstractions. And followers, taking their cue, have learnt to defend the absence of clarity with aggression.
We have seen this before. In 2014 and 2015, a similar wave gathered around Muhammadu Buhari. The language was different; the energy was the same. A moral narrative took hold. Support hardened into certainty. Questions were treated as sabotage. Competence was assumed, not demonstrated.
The outcome is now part of our national experience. One would have thought that lesson settled the matter. Instead, we are here again—only this time with an even more curious proposition.
At least with Buhari, there was a long public career to interrogate, even if it was ultimately found wanting. With Obi, we are asked to accept a mythology that collapses under the slightest scrutiny. We are told he transformed Anambra State. That he performed economic miracles. That he left behind a model of governance.
Yet Anambra, stripped of the narrative, remains largely what it has always been: a commercial society driven by private enterprise, not by any sweeping or visionary state intervention. Beyond the natural dynamism of its people, where is the imprint of radical governance?
Where is the industrial leap? Where is the infrastructure revolution? Where is the institutional overhaul that redefined the state?
What we find is not transformation, but narration—a story told often enough to sound like truth.
Anambra did not become a reference point for structural change. It did not undergo profound economic re-engineering. It did not emerge as a model others sought to replicate. It remained, in essence, what it had long been—energetic, enterprising, but fundamentally untouched by any sweeping governmental vision.
That is the record. And records—not rhetoric—are what serious leadership demands.
So the questions persist, and they are not unreasonable: What is Peter Obi’s economic blueprint for Nigeria? What is his detailed plan for energy? What is the pathway to industrialisation? How, precisely, will restructuring be achieved?
These are not philosophical musings. They are governing imperatives.
Yet each time they arise, we are handed generalities. When specifics are demanded, we are offered sentiments. When clarity is required, we are told to believe.
Read Also: Nigeria needs humanitarian trust fund to tackle poverty – Minister
And when belief is not forthcoming, the mob awakens. That is the danger.
A movement that cannot tolerate scrutiny cannot sustain governance. A political culture that replaces argument with abuse has already abandoned the discipline democracy requires. And a candidate who consistently avoids precision cannot be trusted with complexity.
Nigeria is too fragile, too intricate, too burdened by history to be handed over to projections, demagoguery, and enthusiasm.
Hope is not a plan. Emotion is not policy. Volume is not substance.
So the challenge remains, as stark as ever: Let those persuaded by Peter Obi step forward with evidence—not energy. Point to the policies. Lay out the frameworks. Demonstrate the record. Not what he might do. Not what he is imagined to represent.
But what he has done—in concrete, verifiable terms.
Until then, what we are witnessing is not the emergence of a credible national alternative, but the rise of a movement long on fervour and short on answers.
For a country standing at the edge of consequential choices, that is not merely inadequate. It is a risk we ignore at our peril.
•Osa-Ogbegie, Esq. is a Benin City–based legal practitioner.
