Obi*tuary
By Sam Omatseye On Aug 1, 2022

Suddenly, it is all quiet on the eastern front. No street heckles or flag waving or mooning over a yellow sun, no hooting or baying in public. The rabble no longer raves. Few wonder what happened to the Nnamdi Kanu crowd. Some may wonder if they are withering?

The answer is before our eyes. The Biafran babblers are alive and well. They just swapped icons, rechristened the shrines and rewrote the rites. They left the prophet for a secular priest. They have had a switch of battle gear.

Maybe it is not quiet. We can hear and feel the cacophony. The chants and caterwauling are everywhere, especially on the phones. The twitter bees, the Instagram grimes, the Facebook freaks. They are alive and well, but they have not been at war at the side of their icon, who is griping in detention.


It’s farewell Kanu. Welcome Obi, at least until the new priest peters out. They are at his worship. They embrace it because it does not, for the first time in years, feel like they are outside the mainstream. They are not falling foul of the law, not howling from the fringes. They have Peter Obi as their man. He is mainstream. He belongs, not to the MASSOB, or Kanu’s assembly called IPOB. They can say they have a legitimate tribe and rhetoric. They may pretend to love Nigeria. They may claim to embrace INEC, cling to a political party no one in the police or DSS will harangue.

But that is where it stops. They have transferred the temperament of their former master into the new. And they have not spared any incoherence, any lack of finesse, and threats and tantrums, any show of rabid, primitive cants, or any ululations. They have abused, cursed, thrown imprecations. They have hugged lies about their candidate. They have pelted lies about others. They have distorted material.


Obi has turned out to be an excuse for even closet Biafrans to betray open emotions about Biafra without being accused of it. This includes intellectuals who did not show mercy to him while he reigned in Anambra as a pharisaic chief executive. It is like wearing a colour beneath another colour. Obi has become a shelter for both miscreants and activists of the crowd.

Obi knows this. He is happy to be their catharsis, to be their excuse for unfurling their bile at the system, for acting like revolutionaries. He is playing to it by acting as though he is the saint of Nigerian politics. Perhaps the purists of the Biafran cause are unhappy, and they unleashed a past video clip of Kanu on the social media. In it, Kanu lashes out at Obi as governor and stated what this essayist wrote about him over building a NEXT supermarket while still the governor of Anambra State. The video clip referred to him as a sort of sexual being on the fringe. You can imagine an Aso Rock sweltering with romps of the evil flesh. His so-called Obidients know this. But it counts for little.

They also know that this is the same Obi, whose emissaries were intercepted, while a governor at Apapa, by then police chief Marvel Akpoyibo with over 200 million cash. The matter became a cause celebre with impeachment dangling until the timid state house of assembly was on the take. This is the man they call stingy because he dared to spend on himself and his family, his wife being accused of spending N1.5 billion on tours. The man that admitted he placed Anambra money in his family account, and was not ashamed to confess when confronted. He did not follow due process. This is the man who is speaking from both sides of his mouth for maintaining an offshore account while a governor. This is Obi, who claimed he saved money, while pensioners were looking desperately at their graves.

I can excuse those who think that being stingy is good for the economy because they are looking at how they run their family and personal finances. But no economy works in history by saving money. It stifles the economy. He has not been able to tell us how he will do it, and whether he has done it. We have no landmark in Anambra State to attribute to him, no enduring legacy.

But this essayist can understand why Obi knows that the crowd that adores him will not question him. He is therefore using religion as a bait. He is now on a weekly pilgrimage to churches. Jonathan did the same. The pastors, ever opportunistic, see him as a darling. He is visiting a sectional hue of pews. This is the man who divided the church in Anambra State in his time between Catholics and the others. He is trying to push himself as the Christian candidate of the south while his messengers foul the air with sanctimonious growl about Muslim-Muslim ticket. I am sure Kanu will chuckle in his cocoon, especially when he contemplates what he alleges as his sinful romps in hotels.

There is a divide here. He is pushing himself as a southern candidate. His core followers are advancing him as the Igbo candidate. But how do we reconcile the Biafran with an Obi, who even MASSOB, has denied has anything to do with them? Obi is taking a Machiavellian attitude to the matter. If Biafran impulse will propel him, he will take it. The Biafrans on board believe Obi is their best revenge on the Nigerian state. They can take over the zoo by acting as members of the zoo.

But this psychology is nothing new. The private man and public man may not always cohere. In their huts, they are Biafrans. On the frontlines of battle, they are Obi. It is like Mr. Mani in A.B. Yehoshua’s novel who calls himself a Jew but does not believe in Jehovah. He embraces the culture but renounces its mystery. One of 20th century’s top philosophers, Hannah Arendt, obsesses over this schizophrenia in his opus, The Origins of Totalitarianism. The Obi followers accept Biafra but reject Nigeria. They abandon the mystic of the cause, Nnamdi Kanu, and have followed Obi, its inauthentic saint. It is the pragmatism of the cause. Kanu is the unarmed prophet, sulking behind bars. Obi is out in the open, a bird in hand. Machiavelli warned against the unarmed prophet, who fights without power. Elijah was armed against his foes. So was Jesus until he was crucified. They see Obi as armed with electoral quest. It is their own version of the Trojan War. Obi is the Greek Gift that they will ride in the battle for conquest.

They have now evangelised others from outside the southeast to give a regional legitimacy to their cause. They call themselves Obidients but they obey only one call: the sound of the east. Those in south-south have been seduced as by the cooing of Obi’s voice as by evangelism of the Biafrans. Mind you, they have not abandoned Kanu. But their icon has no power for now. Obi is like Zik, Kanu like Ojukwu. One is a flair, the other a flare.

While Obi hops from church to church and beclouds the hypocrisy among political pastors, the nation watches as his sectional army taunts and harangues others. But Obi will do nothing to restrain his rabble because he knows they are doing a good job in keeping the faithful within their own bubble where they reinforce their own self-delusions. That will last until their last call at the polls. This is not the time to properly interrogate in details the false intimations of Obi’s agenda and hypocrisies. But it is safe to say one thing. Before he peters out and hurtles towards an electoral Obi*tuary, the country knows the content of the crowd and its origin. They are a caterwauling group trying to seduce, without much success, those outside its ethno-religious tent.



https://thenationonlineng.net/Obi/

Tinubu's attack dog. The main one. Omatseye once attacked the Awolowo Family because of Tinubu.
As a journalist that should uphold the truth and expose the shenanigans of the politicians, he has yet to write anything about Alpha-Beta and the land-grabbing activities of Tinubu that has been consistently converting government's land in Lagos into private ownership.

Nobody should lose sleep over The Nation. Before The Nation, there was the Third Eye newspaper funded by Akanni Aluko. Time will tell.

The mistake these opponents of Peter Obi are making, is thinking that only Igbos are supporting Peter Obi, this is so wrong that its pitiable how someone can wallow in such depths of self deceit.

Peter Obi represents the only hope in already hopeless country that has seen the masses suffer for up to 62 years after independence, and there seems to be no Hope's of halting the anguish of the masses.

Peter Obi is getting this massive amount of support across the whole country because APC and PDP has failed everyone, and we dont have the time or patience to try another obvious failure in the old parties with old men whose ideas are even older than themselves.

We all will vote Peter Obi and Yusuf Datti Baba Ahmed, as if our lives depend on it, and yes, our lives may actually depend it that.

I.love this man......he finish work for this masterpiece.

They'll soon come for his head now.

God bless Nigeria and nigerians

You can all see who and who are insulting presidential candidates, later some biased persons like Reno will claim that PO supporters are insulting him.

"The answer is before our eyes. The Biafran babblers are alive and well. They just swapped icons, rechristened["

"They can say they have a legitimate tribe and rhetoric. They may pretend to love Nigeria. They may claim to embrace INEC,...."

"...They have abused, cursed, thrown imprecations. They have hugged lies about their candidate. They have pelted lies about others. They have distorted material...."

"Obi has turned out to be an excuse for even closet Biafrans to betray open emotions about Biafra without being accused of it. This includes intellectuals who did not show mercy to him while he reigned in Anambra as a pharisaic chief executive. It is like wearing a colour beneath another colour. Obi has become a shelter for both miscreants and activists of the crowd."

"If Biafran impulse will propel him, he will take it. The Biafrans on board believe Obi is their best revenge on the Nigerian state. They can take over the zoo by acting as members of the zoo."

This, in mortal kombat is what is termed "Finish him!!!"

Lagos-Ibadan expressway newspapers have been on the rampage this week. The bandit killings doesn't bother them, na Obi be their problem.

Sam May politics not make u derail like Femi Adesina who is now a national disgrace , we know the owner of the newspaper where you work ,but please don’t lose your audience for someone that want to just use u politically

Hmmm!

So Peter Obi who just started his presidential ambition a little over a month ago has become the biggest threat to Tinubu's life long ambition to the extent that The Nation Lagos-Ibadan expressway newspaper have now been deployed solely on attacking the person of Peter Obi.

Finishing!

But that is where it stops. They have transferred the temperament of their former master into the new. And they have not spared any incoherence, any lack of finesse, and threats and tantrums, any show of rabid, primitive cants, or any ululations. They have abused, cursed, thrown imprecations. They have hugged lies about their candidate. They have pelted lies about others. They have distorted material.

IPOB = Zombiedients

From a man whose brain is stuck in Tinubu ass.

Whether he and his corrupt, senseless leaders and agbadorians likes it or not sincere Nigerians who loves this country wants a true change from the evil APC represents.

APC brought ruination to Nigerian within 7yrs and needs to be chased out of power. And Tinubu presidency who has no regard to our secular state will only continue same if not stopped.

Oga rest in pieces with this trash

What else do you expect from an "educated" son of a demon ,ostracized,disgraced and forced down to odua land,.....the world has seen your likes before, and like joseph goebbels the nazi propogandist,.you too shall labour in vain .

...

Waste of time. How many people read this whole garbage in Nigeria. Tinubu people are damned scared of attacking atiku who is the main opposition for fear of offending the north so they settled for attacking obi who they claim has no structure or can't win. How can u concentrate all ur effort on obi? I dare tunubu to accuse atiku of corruption....... sorry i forgot dem no won offend north

nedu666:
Waste of time. How many people read this whole garbage in Nigeria. Tinubu people are damned scared of attacking atiku who is the main opposition for fear of offending the north so they settled for attacking obi who they claim has no structure or can't win. How can u concentrate all ur effort on obi? I dare tunubu to accuse atiku of corruption....... sorry i forgot dem no won offend north

I am not concerned about Obi and whatever spin he puts on the Biafran agitation to get to Aso Rock. I am concerned about two things:

1. What will happen if/when Obi loose the election to Tinubu or Atiku in 2023? With the level of e-violence from his supporters would they even be able to take defeat

2. How will Nigeria deal with a wave of mental health crisis that may ensue if /when Obi loose the election? Many misguided young people think Obi has a magic formular to make their life better. Of course he doesn't but the illusion is strong and the author is right in his assertion that they follow Obi like it's a religion.....Obi loosing 2023 election would mean thousands if not miliions of Obi believers loosing all hope in Nigeria and perhaps in the world.....

Ofunaofu:
Obi*tuary
By Sam Omatseye On Aug 1, 2022

Suddenly, it is all quiet on the eastern front. No street heckles or flag waving or mooning over a yellow sun, no hooting or baying in public. The rabble no longer raves. Few wonder what happened to the Nnamdi Kanu crowd. Some may wonder if they are withering?

The answer is before our eyes. The Biafran babblers are alive and well. They just swapped icons, rechristened the shrines and rewrote the rites. They left the prophet for a secular priest. They have had a switch of battle gear.

Maybe it is not quiet. We can hear and feel the cacophony. The chants and caterwauling are everywhere, especially on the phones. The twitter bees, the Instagram grimes, the Facebook freaks. They are alive and well, but they have not been at war at the side of their icon, who is griping in detention.


It’s farewell Kanu. Welcome Obi, at least until the new priest peters out. They are at his worship. They embrace it because it does not, for the first time in years, feel like they are outside the mainstream. They are not falling foul of the law, not howling from the fringes. They have Peter Obi as their man. He is mainstream. He belongs, not to the MASSOB, or Kanu’s assembly called IPOB. They can say they have a legitimate tribe and rhetoric. They may pretend to love Nigeria. They may claim to embrace INEC, cling to a political party no one in the police or DSS will harangue.

But that is where it stops. They have transferred the temperament of their former master into the new. And they have not spared any incoherence, any lack of finesse, and threats and tantrums, any show of rabid, primitive cants, or any ululations. They have abused, cursed, thrown imprecations. They have hugged lies about their candidate. They have pelted lies about others. They have distorted material.


Obi has turned out to be an excuse for even closet Biafrans to betray open emotions about Biafra without being accused of it. This includes intellectuals who did not show mercy to him while he reigned in Anambra as a pharisaic chief executive. It is like wearing a colour beneath another colour. Obi has become a shelter for both miscreants and activists of the crowd.

Obi knows this. He is happy to be their catharsis, to be their excuse for unfurling their bile at the system, for acting like revolutionaries. He is playing to it by acting as though he is the saint of Nigerian politics. Perhaps the purists of the Biafran cause are unhappy, and they unleashed a past video clip of Kanu on the social media. In it, Kanu lashes out at Obi as governor and stated what this essayist wrote about him over building a NEXT supermarket while still the governor of Anambra State. The video clip referred to him as a sort of sexual being on the fringe. You can imagine an Aso Rock sweltering with romps of the evil flesh. His so-called Obidients know this. But it counts for little.

They also know that this is the same Obi, whose emissaries were intercepted, while a governor at Apapa, by then police chief Marvel Akpoyibo with over 200 million cash. The matter became a cause celebre with impeachment dangling until the timid state house of assembly was on the take. This is the man they call stingy because he dared to spend on himself and his family, his wife being accused of spending N1.5 billion on tours. The man that admitted he placed Anambra money in his family account, and was not ashamed to confess when confronted. He did not follow due process. This is the man who is speaking from both sides of his mouth for maintaining an offshore account while a governor. This is Obi, who claimed he saved money, while pensioners were looking desperately at their graves.

I can excuse those who think that being stingy is good for the economy because they are looking at how they run their family and personal finances. But no economy works in history by saving money. It stifles the economy. He has not been able to tell us how he will do it, and whether he has done it. We have no landmark in Anambra State to attribute to him, no enduring legacy.

But this essayist can understand why Obi knows that the crowd that adores him will not question him. He is therefore using religion as a bait. He is now on a weekly pilgrimage to churches. Jonathan did the same. The pastors, ever opportunistic, see him as a darling. He is visiting a sectional hue of pews. This is the man who divided the church in Anambra State in his time between Catholics and the others. He is trying to push himself as the Christian candidate of the south while his messengers foul the air with sanctimonious growl about Muslim-Muslim ticket. I am sure Kanu will chuckle in his cocoon, especially when he contemplates what he alleges as his sinful romps in hotels.

There is a divide here. He is pushing himself as a southern candidate. His core followers are advancing him as the Igbo candidate. But how do we reconcile the Biafran with an Obi, who even MASSOB, has denied has anything to do with them? Obi is taking a Machiavellian attitude to the matter. If Biafran impulse will propel him, he will take it. The Biafrans on board believe Obi is their best revenge on the Nigerian state. They can take over the zoo by acting as members of the zoo.

But this psychology is nothing new. The private man and public man may not always cohere. In their huts, they are Biafrans. On the frontlines of battle, they are Obi. It is like Mr. Mani in A.B. Yehoshua’s novel who calls himself a Jew but does not believe in Jehovah. He embraces the culture but renounces its mystery. One of 20th century’s top philosophers, Hannah Arendt, obsesses over this schizophrenia in his opus, The Origins of Totalitarianism. The Obi followers accept Biafra but reject Nigeria. They abandon the mystic of the cause, Nnamdi Kanu, and have followed Obi, its inauthentic saint. It is the pragmatism of the cause. Kanu is the unarmed prophet, sulking behind bars. Obi is out in the open, a bird in hand. Machiavelli warned against the unarmed prophet, who fights without power. Elijah was armed against his foes. So was Jesus until he was crucified. They see Obi as armed with electoral quest. It is their own version of the Trojan War. Obi is the Greek Gift that they will ride in the battle for conquest.

They have now evangelised others from outside the southeast to give a regional legitimacy to their cause. They call themselves Obidients but they obey only one call: the sound of the east. Those in south-south have been seduced as by the cooing of Obi’s voice as by evangelism of the Biafrans. Mind you, they have not abandoned Kanu. But their icon has no power for now. Obi is like Zik, Kanu like Ojukwu. One is a flair, the other a flare.

While Obi hops from church to church and beclouds the hypocrisy among political pastors, the nation watches as his sectional army taunts and harangues others. But Obi will do nothing to restrain his rabble because he knows they are doing a good job in keeping the faithful within their own bubble where they reinforce their own self-delusions. That will last until their last call at the polls. This is not the time to properly interrogate in details the false intimations of Obi’s agenda and hypocrisies. But it is safe to say one thing. Before he peters out and hurtles towards an electoral Obi*tuary, the country knows the content of the crowd and its origin. They are a caterwauling group trying to seduce, without much success, those outside its ethno-religious tent.



https://thenationonlineng.net/Obi/

Sam, this issue is quite controversial

richie240:
I.love this man......he finish work for this masterpiece.

They'll soon come for his head now.

God bless Nigeria and nigerians

A tree with sweet fruits will always be attacked by people. The media attacks on Peter Obi by the Nations columnists particularly Sam Omatseye and Idowu Akinlonta is an indication that Tinubu is afriad of Peter Obi.
For a man contesting in an unknown Labour Party to be a threat to Tinubu of APC shows that either Tinubu is an overated politician or Obi is a genius.

Obi has turned out to be an excuse for even closet Biafrans to betray open emotions about Biafra without being accused of it. This includes intellectuals who did not show mercy to him while he reigned in Anambra as a pharisaic chief executive. It is like wearing a colour beneath another colour. Obi has become a shelter for both miscreants and activists of the crowd.

I keep asking, where are those Igbos who gave their candid opinion on Obi's average performance as Governor on the many topics created then on this forum?

Have they all accepted Obi because he now leads the tribal ambition of the SouthEast?

Or is their silence similar to the silence such people had for fear of their lives because of IPOB terrorists?

I just wasted my data reading this nonsense.

Nation newspaper has just lost my patronage both offline and online.

Portraying Obi as a regional leader supported by IPOB is an insult to entire Nigerian's youths including those abroad.
As an Akwa Ibom man, majority of us in Akwa Ibom and all the south south states will Obidiently vote for him.
As youth, I can't waste my vote on a sick eighty seven years old man who knows nothing about security and economy.
I won't vote a man who constantly and publicly urinate on his body even at gunpoint

IgOga:
I am not concerned about Obi and whatever spin he puts on the Biafran agitation to get to Aso Rock. I am concerned about two things:

1. What will happen if/when Obi loose the election to Tinubu or Atiku in 2023? With the level of e-violence from his supporters would they even be able to take defeat

2. How will Nigeria deal with a wave of mental health crisis that may ensue if /when Obi loose the election? Many misguided young people think Obi has a magic formular to make their life better. Of course he doesn't but the illusion is strong and the author is right in his assertion that they follow Obi like it's a religion.....Obi loosing 2023 election would mean thousands if not miliions of Obi believers loosing all hope in Nigeria and perhaps in the world.....

Zombiedients cannot explain what significant economic growth Obi contributed to Anambra.

Even Ngige that spent under 3yrs as Governor of Anambra achieved more.

They will be rehabilitated after the defeat sinks in.

Peter Obi should not be trusted
A northern woman was killed together with her 4 children in Anambra by Ipob, but up to now Peter Obi has never condemned it.
Military couples were killed by the same ipob but no word of
condemnation from Peter Obi
Namdi kanu order his esn to bury terrorist Ikonso with 200 heads of innocent Nigerians but Peter Obi did not say a word.
A VOTE FOR PETER OBI IS A VOTE FOR IPOB TERRORISTS.
Nigerians shine your eyes.

Nwoke, forget deflections and tackle what d erudite marksman penned.

I'm sure if demon attack you in d dream you will blame 'tilumbu'

Ndi-Igbos' sef!

MikeofAfrica:


A tree with sweet fruits will always be attacked by people. The media attacks on Peter Obi by the Nations columnists particularly Sam Omatseye and Idowu Akinlonta is an indication that Tinubu is afriad of Peter Obi.
For a man contesting in an unknown Labour Party to be a threat to Tinubu of APC shows that either Tinubu is an overated politician or Obi is a genius.

richie240:
I.love this man......he finish work for this masterpiece.

They'll soon come for his head now.

God bless Nigeria and nigerians

Which stupid work did he finish?

He only succeed in exposing his pettiness and penchant for the love of filthy lucre.

Everybody knows that Sam Omatseye is a pen-for-hire writer whom Tinubu saved from the humiliation of being dismissed as a newspaper editor ....

He is among those who dread the inevitability of Tinubu's loss...

richie240:
Nwoke, forget deflections and tackle what d erudite marksman penned.

I'm sure if demon attack you in d dream you will blame 'tilumbu'

Ndi-Igbos' sef!

The problem with Tinubu supporters is bigotry. Peter Obi is one of the few former Governors that has not stand trial for corruption since he left office.
Hence every thing written by Sam Omatseye is a merely political rumour. If he is sure of his allegation, then he can approach a court of Law and present his case.
If Peter Obi can make IPOB to abadon their struggle, then he should be celebrated. If Buhari has been able to do same to Bandits and Boko Haram in the north, we would not be presently in a mess.
Tinubu has been accused of drug trafikking, corruption, age falsification and even murder of Funsho William. Why has Sam Omatseye fail to write about those allegations?
It is only then that we can begin to compare who has a better antecedant btw Tinubu and Obi.

richie240:
Nwoke, forget deflections and tackle what d erudite marksman penned.

I'm sure if demon attack you in d dream you will blame 'tilumbu'

Ndi-Igbos' sef!

Can you succinctly indicate the questions or issues he apparently raised?

The fact that you attached any semblance of gravitas to this jeremiad of unsubstantiated allegations says a lot about the quality of your critical thinking skills...

No serious person would waste precious time on the bleatings and manufacture of a disillusioned hack...

We expect more foolish and deluded write up from Yoruba Muslims.

Excellent piece, aptly captured, thoroughly detailed. X-rayed the mindsets of the Obituaries.