Africa's most interesting politician was in London this week. The UK media ignored him.
Africa's most interesting politician was in London this week. The UK media ignored him.
We might be only six weeks from a political earthquake in Nigeria. Time to pay attention?
When Peter Obi launched his candidacy for Nigeria’s presidential election last year he was regarded as an interesting third-party candidate who had little chance of winning. In a political landscape that is normally dominated by long-established, cynical power-brokers from two major parties, Obi brings a refreshing message of an anti-corruption and national renewal. He speaks bluntly about the cynical elite that have controlled the country since independence, amassing vast wealth in the process. Obi is also rich, but not as a result of his political career, which cannot be said of his main opponents in the election, former Lagos governor Bola Tinubu and former vice-president Atiku Abubakar.
Obi lives his own ideals: his children have normal jobs; famously he carries his own luggage at airports and got rid of the vast motorcade when he was a state governor earlier in his career. These may seem trivial but are extraordinary in a country where senior politicians are usually travel in convoys of more than 20 cars, surrounded by huge entourages.
Obi is especially popular with young, online Nigerians, but originally was not seen as having the organisational platform, or the finances, to run a convincing national campaign. Then a series of opinion polls put him as the frontrunner with only six weeks until election day. At the last election his Labour Party scored just 5,000 votes (in a country with over 90 million registered voters). A lot would still need to happen for Obi to win: the polls would need to be right, the election free and fair, disruption from ongoing political violence kept to a minimum. But what looked like an impossibility in the middle of last year now looks distinctly possible. Obi could be the transformational leader that Nigeria has never had.
Nigeria is in desperate need of a good president: in the past year, more than 10,000 people have died in incidents of political violence a number that has increased steadily throughout current President Muhammadu Buhari’s time in office. Buhari is an authoritarian-minded former general whose main appeal was supposed to be his ability to deliver security and stability, on which basis his time in office has been a miserable failure. When I was in the federal capital Abuja in October, even this historically safe city was suffering a severe crime wave. Billions of dollars of oil revenues have gone astray over decades of production, whilst the proportion of the population in extreme poverty has increased. National unity, in a country with over 500 different languages and several religions, feels like a distant improbability.
Obi visited London this week, giving a speech at Chatham House on 16 January. As a potential president of a country of over 200 million people, with a huge energy sector and a significant diaspora here in the UK, you might expect this to be big news, especially with elections imminent. Obi didn’t hold back, describing Nigeria’s capture by “an elite gang of rentier politicians” that had delivered a “failing state”. But there was no coverage in the UK newspapers or BBC news bulletins.
Whether or not the British press covers a visit of a campaigning politician is hardly as important as the question of whether Nigeria can change its fortunes. But one of the world’s most important countries may be about to have a shock election result that could change that country’s trajectory. At least 133 million Nigerians live in poverty. With an inclusive and effective government, countless lives could be transformed. This seems worth our attention.