Ahead of the commencement of presidential campaigns on September 28, the Peter Obi movement is showing leadership in how it intends to engage with Nigerians by introducing novel cause-related engagements for the productive and collaborative engagement of “Obidients” and other Nigerians on social issues, writes Deji Elumoye
For so long, every four years, politicians contest for votes with no attempt to understand that it’s about people’s lives, their hopes, their dreams, and their aspirations. The emergence of Peter Obi, former two-term governor of Anambra state as the Presidential candidate of Labour Party has changed all that. The nation is witnessing the first real emergence of a people’s movement that is focusing on Nigerians coming together to elect their government on the basis of the recognition that it is all about them and their future.
This movement called “OBIDIENTS” is causing a shift in political organizing and engagement with support groups emerging daily to support the organic growth of what is now the Peter Obi phenomenon.
In a marked departure from political grandstanding, the face of the movement, Peter Obi, is consistently elevating political discourse, not tearing at others’ throats but rather engaging in well-articulated national agenda based on a new approach to governance, an approach that underlies his perspective and future-forward positioning for the country.
Against this background, one of the three pillars of the Peter Obi campaign organization, the BIG TENT for Peter Obi, led by Professor Pat Utomi, has initiated and is supporting a series of cause-related engagements for the productive and collaborative engagement of Obidients and other Nigerians on social issues. These include Clean Up Nigeria, to promote a culture of cleanliness of mind, body and environment; Doctors For Peter Obi, a group of over 5000 medical doctors at home and in the diaspora currently providing medical outreach across the country; and LoveCare, designed to feed millions of people across the nation, amongst others.
The Vision of “Clean Up Nigeria,” according to Dr. ChidiOkpaluba, a member of the BIG TENT, is to “mop up and properly channel the energies of our growing Obi-dient youth population to the CLEAN UP NIGERIA project, through various socially impactful SPEAK UP & CLEAN UP activities to promote sustainably organized youth led support rallies for Peter Obi’s emergence as President.”
He explained that the primary aims and objectives of Clean Up Nigeria are to create a rallying point and subject for the productive engagement of youths; create a positive neuro-association between doing good and the Obidatti campaign; serve as channel to support youth Speak-Up (Soro-Soke); and to advance and propagate developed common narratives on topical issues of national discourse as espoused by “Think Tank,” an arm of the Big Tent. The other objectives of Clean Up Nigeria, according to Okpaluba, include the need to show that the Obi presidency will be all about doing good and solving societal problems; clean up our cities and de-clog the drainages in support of the world climate month and beyond; and rid our environments of plastics waste.
Beyond the physical cleanup and environmental activities, the overarching goal of the Clean Up project is all about promoting speaking up, seeking and providing solutions to the problems and challenges bedeviling our country; rallying youths towards productive engagements; support for, and active promotion of transparency and good governance; promotion and support for issues based campaign, not religion, tribe or primordial sentiments; and the realization that everyone can do something to make Nigeria better.
Already, various support groups are being vetted and endorsed to independently continue with the Clean Up project across the country on a periodic basis (weekly, fortnightly, monthly, etc) in their respective localities.
At the flag-off of the Clean Up Nigeria project, Professor Pat Utomi, convener of the BIG TENT observed that Africa is host to significant forest belts that play critical roles in absorbing carbon emissions and thereby putting our country in better steads as part of the planet.
He reckoned that if “our young people commit to this saving of the planet, it can be an outlet for a variety of things, an outlet for truly saving the advance of the dessert into our country which has direct bearing on poverty. Our concern is to stop the desert, to build a green army from which we can receive enormous credit for our country.”
He announced that discussions are ongoing with authorities to begin to build a belt to stop the sahara, re-foresting the forest belt in the south so that “we can actually get billions of dollars in credit that will be used to put literally all of our unemployed people to work as a new production economy is put in place.”
Utomi therefore expects that young people will learn what late President Kennedy said to the youth of America, “ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country,” but in this case for themselves in the long-term.
Said he, “with the youth of Nigeria going around, cleaning up our rural areas as we are cleaning the urban areas we will be able to generate an economic machine that will move our economy forward, but more importantly we will be able to get young people to bond, to engage the problems of now, and learn how to change their country, take their country over, cleaning up the environment, they will clean up consciousness and give us a new country that we can all be proud of.”
Also speaking, NuhuYakubu, the leader of the THINK TANK for Peter Obi, an arm of the BIG TENT that is driving the Clean Up Nigeria project, stressed that the project is about the foundational issues which also speak to the transformational issues that should be addressing the citizenship questions about the peoples of this country, and observed that the demographics of this country should inform policies.
For him, “what better way to harness the collective capacities of our people, starting with the young people, other than a programme that channels the energies of our people to speak to topical issues, issues that worry them, and issues that they want to see change come about.”
According to Yakubu, “we believe at Think Tank as well that poverty belies the challenges that we face in this country today and that our people just now want prosperity, which includes improvement in the standard of living, job creation. We also feel that insecurity is also fueled by the fact that people are not able to express themselves freely as Nigerians.
“We believe that the day to day living, the frustrations that the Nigerian people are faced with, especially the youth is dampening their abilities to engage in critical thinking, and that is the reason we believe that that the Clean Up Nigeria programme which encourages the youth to speak up while they clean are the spirit and letter of the Clean Up project, so its not just the physical cleaning alone, but also includes the cleaning of our minds, cleaning of whatever we see that is not right about Nigeria.”
A Peter Obi Support Group, Good Governance Group (GGG) which has already signed on to the Clean Up Nigeria project also shared their perspective on the social intervention scheme.
According to one of its members, IbidolapoBalogun, GGG was established in 2002 as a watchdog to the nascent democracy in Nigeria. Clean Up Nigeria for the productive and collaborative engagement of Obidients and other Nigerians on social issues, he said, aligns perfectly with the founding principles of the GGG. He also added that preparations for their nationwide health outreach, in support of Obi candidacy, has reached an advanced stage. Quoting Hubert Humphrey, a former USA Vice President who said “the quality of a society is measurable by how well it caters for its most vulnerable members, the children, those who are in the twilights of life, the elderly and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the poor, and the handicapped.”
He pledged the “unalloyed support of the GGG for the Clean Up Nigeria programme. GGG anticipates that the outcome of this laudable initiative will be to galvanise the country on the imperatives of social cohesion and progressive collaboration. We firmly believe in the vision of a new strong, united and progressive Nigeria as conceptualized by the founding fathers of our nation.”
Also, the Doctors for Peter Obi and Medics for Peter Obi movement is a grassroots outreach initiative of doctors and allied professionals who freely volunteered to support the presidential campaign of Obi.
It is a non-profit, non-religious and non-ethnic initiative. It is open to all doctors who are of good character and standing in the community, and are known to be interested in the aims and aspirations of the initiative.
So far, the group stated that it has over 7,000 doctors and about 3,500 Allied Professionals, totaling over 10,000, in the movement at home and in the diaspora, and that its “style is to be Content-Driven, Data-Rich, Knowledge-Sharing.”
Doctors for Peter Obi initiative plans to mobilize 15 million Citizens to take back their country and vote for Obi’s Labour Party. The group stated that it already has Chapters in over 20 States and a vibrant diaspora group with over 200 members.
According to Doctors For Peter Obi, “our hope is that a disciplined and focused government will invest more resources in health and we will be able to save over 1/2 of the One Million Children that die in Nigeria every year. By so doing we will have made our contribution to National Development.”
Already, the UK chapter of Doctors For Obi has concluded a 30-day fully funded medical outreach/sensitization campaign across the 16 LGAs of Taraba State in collaboration with the Taraba Doctors4 For Peter Obi.
According to them, “our motivation is the simple fact that this is a movement that seeks to improve and secure the future of our home.”
The mindset, and therefore the message of the Obi team is a clarion call that today’s politics should not be about the candidates but about Nigerians, their dreams, aspirations, beliefs and hopes. Above all is an understanding of the need to collaborate to make things happen.
