PitObi: A Candle Light In The Wind And Social Forces In Conflict -By Richard Odusanya

Let me begin with the golden words of Edith Wharton, an American novelist, short story writer, and interior designer. Edith once said: “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” however when it becomes a weaponized instrument for personal aggrandizement and falsehood, it ceased to function in the right direction. In some of my recent articles, on the personage of the Labour Party Presidential candidate Mr Peter Obi, we touched upon the idea that people do lie and stretch the truth. The price of lying is often a high one: being known as a deceiver. If a leader lies, people cannot trust them. If your boss lies, you cannot rely on them. The lack of trust is a high price to pay for deception, and it can cause a great trap—one that the deceiver isn’t even aware of. Sadly, many of our compatriots home and abroad became victims of manipulation and deceitfulness.

Ultimately with such level of deceitfulness what you have is a candle light in the wind. Similarly, social conflict is the struggle for agency or power in society. Social conflict occurs when two or more people oppose each other in social interaction, and each exerts social power with reciprocity in an effort to achieve incompatible goals but prevent the other from attaining their own. It is a social relationship in which action is intentionally oriented to carry out the actor’s own will despite the resistance of others. social forces in conflict, forces that use a bewildering variety of tactics to secure a … vulnerable to delusions of omnipotence and very poorly informed and gullible followers excited about nothing but fallacies, sad and unfortunate.

In an interview with Channels Television, the Governor of Anambra State, Charles Soludo, spoke about the various challenges he has faced while governing Anambra State and how he conquered them. He also spoke about the speculated investment made by the former Governor of the state, Peter Obi, stating that the purported investment made by him is next to nothing. During the interview with Seun Okinbaloye, the Gov Soludo in an unmistakable statement, said: “By the way the one that you talked about I don’t know about that. I think there was something I read about somebody speculating about whatever investment. With what I’ve seen today, the value of those investments is worth next to nothing.” ~ Charles Soludo former governor of the central bank and the sitting governor, Anambra State

Facts are Sacred, opinion at the level of a sitting governor is near sacrosanct: Soludo knows the Nigerian economy like the back of his hand as a former governor of the CBN in charge of the monetary policy of Nigeria. His verdict about Peter Obi is the truth, even as the governor of a State once governed by Peter Obi, he has all the data and facts about Obi’s performance as governor. In the recent past some ardent PitObi stans, just a few months ago, made it their full time vocation to defend – like it was a thesis – their principal’s unguarded investments, his fat fingers in the Anambra State tills, into his family owned brewery. Larceny, high level theft, square and simple.

Interestingly, the gig is out on the said investments, especially from an unfailing source; the sitting Governor of the same state. By all indices, PitObi could well take the plate as the biggest fraud to have ever trundled through the Nigerian polity. A pseudo-intellectual, a posture-technocrat, vacuous in words and deeds. Hopefully by next February, when he would have been trounced at the polls – bloodied nose and all – he would go down as the man who credulously reckoned he could game the system, and naively thought he’d win. Nigerians, of course, regarded him as suffering from delusions of grandeur.

Blown out like a candle in the wind: It is thus wild and extremely delusional to assume that at the level of presidency of the federal republic of Nigeria; Nigerians can settle for a man driven by inordinate ambition and unprecedented contradiction. Sadly PitObi may not apologize. Apologizing is pretty easy. You say, “I’m sorry.” And that’s it. Unfortunately, it’s something you’ll rarely hear from a dishonest person. They’ll say, “I’m sorry. But …” Then comes the about-face, usually fueled by an accusation: “But I only did it because you did, blah, blah, blah.” This happens out of fear, particularly in fear’s common disguises of arrogance, perfectionism or some other form of superiority. The person’s central, self-dooming premise is: It’s all about me, and if I just plead not guilty to every charge, it’ll stay that way.

Flowing from the foregoing, we are witnessing early signs of dishonesty: it used to be “I don’t have shoes” after that “My cows only…” now we are in the era of “I am a trader, I have just one wristwatch and one house” Instructively the lives of most our compatriots have not improved since the military adventurists/politicians unwittingly use religionists and dogmatists to dislocate our system many years back. Persistent conflict and slow economic progress caused living standards to decline year after year. Most people (82%) live on less than $1.90 a day, and, presently there were 100 million more poor citizens than in 1999. Population growth, combined with weak economic growth resulted in a 62% decline in gross domestic product per capita in 2021 compared to 1960. Such is the results of transactional leadership.

Conclusively, permit my indulgence to say that If not for dishonesty, PitObi should have used the same money that is described as “Worthless” today, to provided drainages, tarred roads, build schools and hospitals, pay elderly and pay welfare benefits to poor people in excruciating pains of extreme poverty. Therefore, I like to admonish us with a consumer-centric outreach programme tagged, “Shine your eyes, no fall mugu”, which literally translates to, “Be alert, Don’t be a victim of fraudsters”. Finally, I am not unmindful of the sentiments and emotion that drives a bandwagon fallacy like what is currently in our political space. However caution is the key words.

Richard Odusanya
odusanyagold@gmail.com