By AZU ISHIEKWENE
Peter Obi has the best chance against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in 2027 of all opposition candidates. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, may have received a slightly higher percentage of the votes (6.9 million or 29.1 percent) in the last presidential election; still, that was poor for Atiku, a sixth-timer in the presidential race.
Obi had less than one year to prepare after his former party, the PDP, shafted him, followed by the bitter struggle for control between Atiku and the former Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, which left the party in ruins.
Outside the wreckage, Obi scored 6.1 million or 25.4 percent of the votes, toppling the All Progressives Congress, APC, in its traditional Lagos stronghold, energising young voters, and causing a stir amongst the complacent political elite.
Born to survive
After coming a solid third, the question was whether he could keep the momentum, strengthen the LP and manage his vibrant, sometimes fiercely unruly crowd of “Obidient” followers until the next election cycle.
He has, so far. To have survived the tumult in the Labour Party, LP, which now has three rival claimants to its leadership, and watch from the outside, what could be the final burial rites of his former party, the PDP, Obi has done well.
Yet, as surely as success invites its perils, he is entering what may prove to be the most delicate phase of his political journey, two years before the next presidential election. Obi is confused, and dangerously so, when he needs clarity the most.
Adventure to ADC
He is flirting with the African Democratic Congress, ADC, the party former President Olusegun Obasanjo vowed in 2019 would unseat the APC, but which failed disastrously to do so. The ADC’s past failure is not necessarily a bad thing. Nor is the renewed crisis in the party; they all have problems, only different in severity.
The problem is that Obi is unsure whether to join the ADC, which, like the bat, neither resembles a political rodent nor a coalition bird, or to stand firm and try to repair a fractured LP before the next election. Although he says he is not desperate, pinching himself while saying so, he believes this might be his best chance to become president, which is a fair ambition.