In my language, Itsekiri, we have a saying, which can also be a name, Ujaweyin. It means that the fight is behind you. I want to appeal to Peter Obi to reflect on the phrase ‘Ujaweyin’.
The #NigerianElections2023 is in no way, shape, or form like the coup in Guinea-Bissau. In light of the security challenges we face in Nigeria, it is rather provocative to draw an inference between these two unrelated events.
Making such comparisons is a dangerous and desperate gambit.
Peter Obi is not closer to former President Jonathan than I am. I called the former President while he was in Guinea-Bissau, and His Excellency also called me.
Former President Jonathan did not, and will not, compare what occurred in Guinea-Bissau with what transpired during the 2023 election, because that would be juxtaposing apples with oranges.
He called the Guinea-Bissau coup a ‘ceremonial’ one. But there was nothing ceremonial about the victory of President Bola Tinubu in 2023.
In Guinea-Bissau, we had an incumbent President who looked set to lose the election and was suspected of colluding with the military to forestall the impending declaration of his arch-rival as the winner of the polls.
To put things in proper perspective, the Guinea-Bissau Presidential election and the conduct of President Umaro Sissoco Embaló can best be described as resembling the June 12, 1993, incident in Nigeria.
In Nigeria, none of the candidates in the 2023 election was an incumbent, and, for all intents and purposes, none had the backing of the then-incumbent, General Muhammadu Buhari.
If anything at all, it was speculated by those who should know that the then Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, who himself wanted to be President, worked with some influential individuals to introduce fiscal policies targeted at one of the candidates.
As for the conduct of the election, all international observers publicly stated that the polls reflected the will of the Nigerian people.
For example, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labour of the US Department of State, stated as follows:
“National elections were widely reported to have reflected the will of voters.”
Moreover, as I said privately to people in the People’s Democratic Party before the election, if in 2019, when the PDP was united, we could not defeat the All Progressives Congress, how could we hope to vanquish them in 2023, when we had splintered into four, namely:
The mainstream PDP
The G-5
The Kwankwaso group left to form NNPP, and
The Peter Obi loyalists who joined Labour?
If you tabulate the votes the PDP, Labour, and NNPP received in the 2023 Presidential election, you will find they match the votes a united PDP secured in the 2019 polls, with slight adjustments to account for population growth. We just split it three ways!
In 2023, the Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress had 20 Governors united behind him, without even a single abstention.
Additionally, the five PDP Governors of the G-5 cast their lot with him.
It was just a matter of common political sense to know that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu would win the election.
You, sir, challenged his victory at the Presidential Election Petition Court, and in your pleadings, you did not state that you won the elections. Rather, you pleaded that the then President-elect was not qualified based on a conviction, not winning Abuja, and sundry other flimsy reasons which were thrown out by the courts all the way to the Supreme Court, which spent less than five minutes dismissing your appeal.
Therefore, on what basis are you likening the 2023 Nigerian election to the Guinea-Bissau coup?
Peter, you lost the election fairly. You were not even second. You were a distant third. Let it go!
Please, sir, I appeal to you to imbibe the spirit of Ujaweyin and put the fight behind you. You lost an election. But that does not mean that you should also lose your mind!
Thank you, and may God bless you.
Bemigho Reno Omokri
