Publisher's Synopsis
This time last year, no one saw Peter Obi coming. Mentally, Nigerians were preparing for yet another general election in a series dominated since the country's return to democracy in 1999 by the incumbent All Progressives Congress (APC) and its rival People's Democratic Party (PDP). An uninspiring two-horse race seemed all but guaranteed, and voters were more or less set to pull the lever for the lesser of two evils in a long-standing arrangement that had failed to deliver the expected "dividends" of economic relief and social stability, but that no one seemed to have either the ingenuity or the resources to challenge effectively.
All that changed in May, 2022, when Peter Obi, the former governor of the southeastern state of Anambra, sensing that a deal had been done that would eventually sideline him in favor of former vice president and perennial PDP candidate Atiku Abubakar, decided to part ways with the PDP. Obi was, contrary to mythology, no maverick outsider. Having been Abubakar's running mate back in an unsuccessful 2019 presidential bid, he could well have stayed within the party and teamed up with him again, but, this time, Obi resolved not to play second fiddle to anyone. Indications have since emerged that his defection to the relatively unknown Labour Party was not a last-minute thing but a move instigated and fully backed by political elders in the Yoruba heartland desperate to prevent either Abubakar or Bola Tinubu, the political bigwig from the Southwest, from becoming president. Obi's initial move may have stemmed from high-stakes political machinations, but, nonetheless, neither he nor his backers could have anticipated what came next.
