solomon baton

Peter Obi is no longer putting his ideas out in public. I think I know why. Grab a coffee it’s another long one. Come with me to 2022 when Peter Obi made the racket of the subsidy regime mainstream. He said it was a criminal enterprise and he would tackle the criminality, and if it continued to be unsustainable he would remove it. He compared Nigeria to Pakistan who have a similar population, as many cars, but consume 20million ltrs/day, while operators in Nigeria claimed subsidy money for 60 million ltrs/day. He asked, “Who is drinking the rest?” He made it easy for us to understand. Stay with me here. He importantly made a commitment that the money saved would be visibly channelled into critical areas of development, “… and people will see it!” Now here’s the rub. Because he has been open about his plans, and people trust him, he had inadvertently softened the ground for the heartless variant of subsidy removal that Tinubu did. I submit that the lack of resistance that people showed was because the idea was popularised by a trustworthy person. Tinubu seized the idea and warped it. He removed its human face so that it was the already rich, who had originally benefited from the corruption in the subsidy regime, that still landed on their feet. The rest of us were left holding the bag like suckers! Then came May 29, 2023, inauguration day, when we heard, “Subsidy is gone!” A thoughtless, soulless pronouncement of a king who forced himself on the people exerting revenge for not showing him love. That’s how I see it — a power move against the people. “You refused to vote for me, yet I am president and your life is like clay in my hands. Who’s crying now?” How else could I make sense of it? Was it rank stupidity? You and I know that no one is that stupid. Maybe it was pure conscienceless greed, where the only thing that mattered was the money that will not be paid as subsidies but can go to buying patronage and extending power. Do you see how good ideas can be thoroughly corrupted in the hands of someone whose character and motivations are at odds with the people they’re meant to serve? Now when we complain, his supporters will say, “Did your Messiah not say subsidy was bad and had to go?” So yeah, I think Peter Obi has stopped softening the ground for their callousness to land without resistance. Let them generate policies entirely on their own so people will judge them on execution and the impact on people’s lives. No more heartless spins on good ideas that have been “marketed” by a trustworthy person. PO now insists that we must vote on the merits of the character of the person making the promise. Consider this. When Dangote declared that he would build Africa’s largest refinery, even people who were doubtful knew one thing — fail or succeed he would give it a good go. It wasn’t the same kind of farting in the wind as, “If I don’t give you power after 4 years, don’t vote for me.” Once people knew the site of the proposed refinery, they rushed to buy adjoining lands on the strength of the character and antecedents of the man Dangote. So guys, Peter Obi is no longer popularising ideas. None of these ideas are rocket science, as he puts it, anyway. If you say you’re going to build a house, build it. It’s as simple as that. Sure there are issues that will arise. Things that people don’t anticipate, problems are a constant in every project. But building a house is a known craft. The engineering is not esoteric. Neither is large scale electricity which has been around for a century. In recent times, similar countries as Nigeria have ramped up theirs — Egypt 28k MW, Indonesia 60k MW. Peter Obi had to visit them to see if they were using juju — they weren’t. So when the man who conquered greed says I will generate and distribute 10k MW — I’d sooner believe and trust his commitment than the guys who have never seen a ₦1m they could steal and left it alone.