I am among the very many Obidients whose hope was high considering the constant assurances that INEC gave Nigerians that they will conduct a free, fair and credible election. For many of us, the outcome of the poll was easily predictable taking into account the abysmal performance of the Buhari led administration. In every street, quarter and probably every local government area particularly in southern Nigeria that I am familiar with, there arose an army of non-partisan people from various walks of life who were ready to give their all to ensure that power returned to us- the citizens.
By simply calculating the results at our disposal, we were confident of victory for Peter Obi, but fears surged when we discovered that INEC has reversed its own administrative procedure for the transmission of results. The BVAS to the best of our knowledge was meant to accredit and transmit the data to the iReV portal so that ordinary Nigerians can have access to real-time progress of the collation and tabulation of results.
Upon announcement of the winner by the electoral body, we were all devastated.
Not long after, news filtered in that from the INEC sever, Peter Obi clearly defeated every other candidate in 19 states of the federation and the FCT. This information was timely, it brought us succour and presumably so, it was- *“the light at the end of tunnel”.*
Given my professional background, inquisitive nature, and the Nigerian factor, I chose to query the information with the aim of ascertaining its veracity- I needed to eliminate every shred of doubt. To my greatest bewilderment, the news of winning these states was not true. The source of the info was the *NEXTIER Group* and it was merely a forecast they made based on the result of an online poll that they conducted prior to the election.
Like me, another staunch supporter of this movement, Mark Essien ( *@MarkEssien* on twitter) led a team of Obedient supporters to carry out a painstaking, thorough, unbiased and diligent collation of the results. The first set of results on this independent iReV showed Peter Obi in clear lead, justifying our claim that our candidate was actually rigged out. *@MarkEssien* tweeted on Thursday- *“the way things are going, by tomorrow, we would have counted 160,000 polling unit results and done our own collation, all collation officers that thought they could announce anything they wanted did not understand the power of a mass movement”.*
However, the result several hours later showed that the candidate of the ruling party was ahead against expectations. With the development some obidients like *@AfamDeluxo* turned on Essien by calling him names. It became increasingly obvious that we may have truly lost this election. Aside this, more worrisome is the fact that we have refused to jettison our emotions so as to objectively evaluate/critic our performance particularly in areas we ought to win, have those responsible account for our failures, effect corrections where necessary especially as the gubernatorial and House of Assembly elections will take place in a weeks time. Rather, we have continued to bask in the euphoria of an imaginary victory.
I strongly opine that we stop promoting figures that are untrue as they will not only give a false sense of hope and eventually turn our people against us, they will also polarize our enviable movement. Disturbingly so, it is very certain that there are pockets of individuals within our Obedient fold who are intentionally dealing in lies and falsehood for the purpose of creating division, anger, unrest and distrust among the family in particular, and the Nigerian populace in general. I recommend that we fish them out now and do away with them before they contaminate others- they are the traditional politicians that we are not. While we were genuinely pursuing the ObiDatti course, they moved in and quietly found refuge under the Labour Party. Some have already schemed their ways into becoming candidates of the party while many others have taken to running for offices in proxies.
For this reason, I have decided to stay away from voting during the governorship and state houses of assembly elections. In many states of the federation, gubernatorial candidates of the labour party have openly withdrawn and endorsed those of other parties. As an example, in Taraba state, the Labour party candidate, Phillip Munlip alongside the state working committee of the party openly endorsed the candidate of the PDP Lt. Col. Kefas Agbu (Rtd). Similar situation has played out in Edo state where the PDP governor Mr. Godwin Obaseki is alleged to have procured forms for all the candidates contesting the House of Assembly election under the Labour party. With these few, I cannot knowingly cast my vote for compromised candidates. It is left for ordinary member of the Obidient movement to have a rethink of our support pattern. We cannot afford to be continually deceived by politicians and their stooges who are poised to use the popularity of Peter Obi to assume political offices.
*_Dr. Udechukwu Donatus-Collins writes from Isiala-Ngwa_*