Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State may have cut a pitiable figure last Thursday as he sat in one of

the pews of the Cathedral of Assumpta, Owerri at a clerical event of the Roman Catholic Church.
As he was introduced a round of applause swept through the congregation and quickly died down.
Following him, the presiding clergy now introduced Mr Peter Obi, the former governor of Anambra
State and a deafening applause swept through putting to oblivion that which welcomed Uzodimma.
Indeed, it needed the intervention of the presiding cleric to bring the congregation to stop.
As a riposte, the cleric said he knew that the congregation wanted to be OBIdient. The action of the
congregation last Thursday is reflective of the growing agitation behind the 2023 presidential aspiration
of Mr Peter Obi.
The OBIdients as they identify themselves have been reported to be doing outlandish things to project
their man in a way that reminds us all of what is called youthful exuberance.
One Abuja lady with twitter handle @jojoNitq has reportedly dropped her boyfriend for refusing to see
the light in Obi and preferring to remain with the old order.
What had started as a social media phenomenon is now growing traction on the ground. Uzodimma
indeed should know.
Days earlier, the first OBIdient senator in the land emerged when Senator Francis Onyewuchi
representing Imo East joined the Labour Party riding on the popularity that Obi’s advent into Labour
has given the party.

Besides Onyewuchi, a number of leading political actors within and outside the Southeast have also
joined Labour to the extent that the party is bound to get reckoning in the Southeast in 2023.
Besides Uzodimma, another governor who should feel concerned or indeed has expressed his opinion
on the increasing agitation of the OBIdient Nigerians is Governor Godwin Obaseki.
Speaking after the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP came third in the Ekiti State governorship election,
Obaseki expressed concern that the mainstream political movement could be thrown out of reckoning
with the agitation of the OBIdient Nigerians.
Given that he has been displaced and his supporters have become Internally Displaced Politicians,
IDPs, the thought of Governor Obaseki becoming the first OBIdient governor in the country may not
be farfetched. With the Dan Orbih led machine in charge of the PDP structure in Edo State, and the
APC not an option, Labour could be a place of refuge from the storm ahead for him.
The reality is that what many had considered as a social media phenomenon is turning into a movement
with the increasing determination of many of Obi’s adherents to make an impact on the ballot.

It is no wonder that the majority of those registering for their Permanent Voter Cards, PVCs are
OBIdient Nigerians.
Indeed, in a way as never before, some Nigerians who had in the past stayed away from partisan
politics are even identifying themselves with Obi.
Aisha Yesufu the sacrificial activist has for the first time to the knowledge of your correspondent
endorsed a presidential contender in the person of Obi. Many others in the arts are also doing so to the
shock of some political machine operators.
Rivers born Tonto Dikeh, Pete Edochie, and a number of celebrities have already identified themselves
as OBIdients. It was, however, surprising that the same Tonto Dikeh has now been named as the deputy
governorship candidate of African Democratic Congress, ADC.
On Twitter the OBIdient enthusiasts are everywhere to the extent that they are bullying otherwise
reputed cyber tormentors like Reno Omokri who now mentions them in adjectival terms.

It is no surprise that established political actors are now considering Obi as a threat.
It is perhaps in realization of his threat that those who yesterday took him as irrelevant are now
courting him. Nyesom Wike whose friend Chris Uba, undermined Peter Obi in Anambra, received Obi
for hours last Wednesday. Just weeks back in the thick of the PDP primary campaigns Wike did not
bother to see Obi even when he came to Anambra.
Wike must have learnt his lesson because Mr Chris Uba that he backed to grab the PDP structure in
Anambra did not have a single national delegate given that the delegates were already aligned to Chief
Olisa Metuh and other stakeholders.
Another man who despised Obi is Rev Ejike Mbaka. His criticism of Obi’s supposed stinginess stirred
a wave of adulation for the former Anambra governor as it inspired the beautifully crafted story from
Bianca Ojukwu of the former governor turning down a $3,000 suit only to handover the money for
same to her charity.
What benevolence could be more than that? Instead of further nailing Obi, Mbaka helped to popularize
his credential and he did so at the cost of his pulpit ministry.

Mbaka has now apologized.

For the first time in a generation Nigeria’s political contest could turn into a three-way-race if Obi is
able to sufficiently mobilise the momentum that is now coming his way into electoral weight.  That is if
he is able to harness the enthusiasm on social media and in the Southeast and push onto other grounds.
Osun State governorship election is nearby, and given the time ahead for him he would make more
reckoning if he is able to galvanise his base in the state to show himself as really a phenomenon.

The Obidient political phenomenon

By Dan Agbese

07 October 2022   |   2:21 am

Political parties use political rallies as a combination of mob psychology and propaganda to provide

supposed empirical evidence of their public acceptance or popularity.

Political parties use them as important tools to swamp their rivals wherever government is instituted

through the instrumentality of the ballot box. 

Political parties go to great lengths to organise mega rallies because the larger the crowd at campaign

rallies the more difficult it is to deny their relative popularity and acceptance. They pay and transport

tens of men and women to rally venues to swell the crowd. We get to know about the hired crowds only

when the parties fail to pay them the agreed fees for their being used to sell a lie. 
Obidient

The current million-man marches and rallies sweeping through our towns and cities by the Obedient
crowds in support of the presidential ambition of Peter Obi, basically follow the same principle of mob
psychology and propaganda.

The Labour Party is a small party taking on the giant parties, APC and PDP, to possibly prevent our

national politics from becoming permanent swings from one party to the other. Each of them has done

much better than tasted power.

PDP was in power for 16 years. APC has been in power since 2015. They are rich, have the reach and

are powerful, and impregnable. This is perhaps part of the attraction for young people. They see the

audacity of a small party taking on the party behemoths as a challenge to join in the rescue of our
national politics from the grips of recycled men and women. 

Peter Obi is the presidential candidate of Labour Party. He is younger than Atiku Abubakar (PDP) and

Ahmed Bola Tinubu (APC). He was governor of Anambra State. He has been in the system too and

cannot claim innocence in what has gone wrong in our national politics. He is not, to borrow from

former President Goodluck Jonathan, such a fresh breath of air after all.

Still, that the young rally for him suggesting there is something going for him. His party is the smallest

of the three biggest ones. Its war chest may be light in a war waged with money. People snort at the

Obidient rallies and dismiss the crowds as irritating youthful noise-makers incapable of dislodging

either APC or PDP from power when to borrow from K.O. Mbadiwe, “the come comes to become.”

After all, they say, rather dismissively, that the Obedient youths do not even have voters’ cards and

cannot vote. They are only whipping up sentiments that will do no harm to the entrenched nature of our

national politics. It is the natural reaction to the possibility of a radical change in every society. 

I see Obidient as a political movement, the likes of which we had not seen before in our country. It has

seized our imagination. It is driven by young people and benefits from crowd psychology. It attracts the

rally-goers by the sight of each crowd in each town. It markets itself as a political movement by the

young and for the young. Young people who do not participate in the mega rallies feel guilty because,

by their absence, they betray their fellow young people and the country itself. 

It should be possible for the discerning to see these Obidient mega marches and rallies as a surprising

phenomenon in a country held down by conservative views of politics and is allergic to radical

changes. It is important to interrogate this phenomenon and understand where the young people are

coming from and what their political objectives are in our national politics. So far, the movement has

not defined its mission.

Those who are dismissive of the Obidients forget that the political industry is prone to accidents. Good
people lose elections and bad people win them. In the infrequent accidents of politics, the dark horse

suddenly zooms ahead of the favourite horses. He becomes the game changer and proves that political

fortunes are fickle and ride on the fickle-mindedness of the electorate. Politics is too uncertain to be

treated as a certainty.

At least two things are worth interrogating, to begin with. The first is how the Obidient crowd began,

took shape, and has become, against the background of the current internal sabotage in APC and PDP,

the most positive happening in town right now. Political campaigns and rallies are the primary

businesses of political parties. They organise and fund them to promote and market themselves to the

electorate. 

In the normal scheme of politics, this means that the Labour Party must be responsible for the mega

marches. But it is not the case. This is where it gets interesting. If the party did it would have breached

the law because the marches began long before INEC blew the whistle for the official start of the 2023

political race on September 28. Most of the Obidient marchers are not even members of the Labour

Party. What then is their motivation in spending their financial and other resources to organise or

participate in the mega marches in support of his presidential ambition? 

It is an important question. This brings us to the second thing worth interrogating: What do the young

people see in Obi that fires them to organise and participate in the rallies, not as hired crowds but as

committed men and women to a yet undefined political cause? Are they positively promoting the

change we need and crave or are they reacting to the feeling that if nothing radical is done about the

nature of our politics by the youths, the tiresome circle of recycling will remain our political lot? 

More questions. Do they see Obi as the new face of our national politics? Do they see in him a clean

politician capable of leadership as distinct from rulership? Do they see the Labour Party as the vehicle

for change and the rallying point for them to do what some young people have done elsewhere – effect
radical changes in the nature of their national politics and leadership?

We do not quite know yet what the Obidients stand for. We can only speculate what they are saying

from what they are not saying at this point. They are not talking about the traditional political fare, as in

our major fault lines such as religion and ethnicity; they are not talking about fighting corruption; they

are not talking about which tribe or section of the country must produce the next president; they are not

talking about political parties. They are talking about Peter Obi. They have not yet elevated him to our

saviour, but they seem prepared to invest their hope in him as the kind of political leader they want,

need, and must have. This is rather heavy. 

We are witnessing a radical departure from the leadership recruitment process, a badly flawed system

that has imposed incompetent and indifferent leaders on the people at all levels of government. Some

people are beginning to see the Obidient phenomenon as a revolution. This may be a tempting

assessment, but it is rather easy and glib at this point. But it is still possible to see it in a more liberal

sense of revolution, to wit, a movement towards fundamental changes in how a country does its

political business and recruits its leaders. This is often referred to as a silent, non-violent revolution. It

achieves the same purposes as a violent revolution.

Every society fears a revolution because the entrenched interests have much to lose in a revolution,

peaceful or violent. Radical journalist/political activist, Omowunmi Sowore, frightened the system

operators a couple of years or so ago when he talked of revolution now. If the objective of the young

people is to put the recycled men out to pasture, they do have a fight on their hands. The current order

will resist an emerging new, radical order. 

An important point needs to be made here. By its nature, politics is a game tolerant of recycling and of

recycled men and women. It fences in the old and fences out the new. An occasional accident causes

the brief emergence of young men like Barack Obama of the US and Macron of France, but the system

soon recovers and settles back on the existing system and ensures that a young president is not

followed by another young president. 

In a society not given to mediocrity, a phenomenon such as the Obidient rallies challenge collective

societal thoughts on changes it needs from time to time to pull itself up from the rut in which it is stuck.

The Obidient rallies open up possibilities towards radical or revolutionised thinking in the business of

politics, the leadership recruitment process unencumbered by religious and ethnic interests. The

Obidient movement is towards a political system that does not owe its relevance to the shenanigans of

godfathers and godmothers; a political system in which the people, without inducement or threats of

personal deprivation, recognise and throw their lot with someone they believe will best serve the

national interests with the efficient management of their diversities. 

My take is that however the Obidient rallies and marches end, they will, in the end, succeed in making

a tectonic shift, no matter how slight or imperceptible, in the business of our national politics. If the

dark horse does not breast the tape, it will still leave its mark on the race as a whole. It will be

something worth celebrating.

 In this article

 OBIdient

 Peter Obi

 politics

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