- Title: Meet the man rallying "Obi-dients" to shake up Nigeria's election
- Date: 23rd August 2022
- Summary: LAGOS, NIGERIA (RECENT) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF PETER OBI AT HIS LAGOS RESIDENCE
- Embargoed: 6th September 2022 11:07
- Keywords: Election Obi-dients Peter Obi Voting Youths
- Location: Lagos and Abuja
- City: Lagos and Abuja
- Country: Nigeria
- Topics: Africa,Government/Politics,Elections/Voting
- Reuters ID: LVA001998222082022RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Peter Obi is hardly a political outsider, but the former governor says he is looking to harness Nigerians' anger with the status quo to power his third-party presidential bid.
Obi, 61, has generated substantial buzz among younger voters in Africa's most populous democracy, where the average age is 18, but the president - and both major-party candidates for the February 2023 election - are septuagenarian political veterans.
His followers, who call themselves "Obi-dients", say he can solve what ails Nigeria, including unprecedented insecurity, industrial-scale oil theft and allegations of widespread corruption eight years after President Muhammadu Buhari ran promising to eradicate it.
Nigerian electoral law forbids candidates from campaigning before Sept. 28.
In a recent interview at his Lagos residence, Obi, speaking as a private citizen, said Nigeria's problems could turn voters against the two dominant parties, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP).
‘’I believe that the two parties are part of the problem, I don’t see them being part of the solution because the system they’ve operated over the years is what brought us to where we are, so we need a total change," Obi told Reuters in an interview during a recent visit to Lagos, the commercial capital.
Bola Tinubu, 70, is the APC candidate and Atiku Abubakar, 75, is running for the opposition PDP.
Many of Obi's backers were also prominent in 2020 protests against police brutality that ended with security forces opening fire on unarmed demonstrators, leaving them particularly keen to oust older leaders.
Young people accounted for half of voters in 2019, and 84% of the 10.49 million recently registered voters were aged 34 and below.
Obi was Atiku's running mate in 2019, but said he lost faith in the nomination process.
He is now running with the Labour Party, one of 18 registered political parties.
Obi said that voters in a nation "on the brink" would eschew religious, ethnic and tribal loyalties that typically help the major parties dominate elections.
"My vote must count whether they like it or not, my vote must count, I must vote yes. And I hope every other youth will vote because we need to end this whole drama in this country, we need to end it," Peculiar Ogbeh said.
"They have verified my background and they think that what I’m preaching, I’m practicing. And they believe that I am competent and have the capacity to do it," Obi said.
Still, as a political veteran himself, Obi has attracted his share of controversy in the past.
Assets he controlled appeared in the Pandora Papers leaks, and during the 2019 campaign he and Atiku were challenged on their track records regarding corruption and investing government funds in private businesses, some of which they owned shares in, while in public office. Both denied any allegations of graft, and Obi said the Pandora Papers accounts were part of legal and legitimate asset management.
Now Obi says he is happy to stand on his record as governor of south-eastern Anambra state, which left a rare budget surplus.
His gubernatorial tenure, he added, showed that he was unafraid of angering powerful interests to help the nation, and was more important to voters than his Christian faith or identity as an Igbo - an ethnic group where some members agitate for a breakaway nation.
"We will break all of it to make it work because we can no longer continue to have this level of unemployment. We must bring manufacturing back. We need to increase the manufacturing contribution to the GDP," he said.
Obi said he is finalizing specifics of his platform - such as how he would handle the tightly controlled naira currency or deal crippling fuel subsidies.
But he said he would renegotiate debt, extricate the government from the economy and enable the private sector to thrive.
(Production: Seun Sanni, Abraham Achirga, Angela Ukomadu) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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